Secrets
by phoenixnz
Summary: Chloe learns something about her mother and discovers she has a whole other family she never knew about. But in trying to uncover her family's secret, Chloe's own secrets may be discovered. NB: Season 7 Smallville, Season 5 NCIS
1. Chapter 1

Ever since Chloe had learned she was a meteor freak, it was as if her entire life had turned upside down. Finding out her best friend was an alien a few years ago had been earth-shattering, not to mention incredible. And that had changed her life; for the better as far as she was concerned.

Being kidnapped by Lex (not that she had any real proof that it was him) because of a latent meteor power, which she had never been aware of until she'd been kidnapped, had put her in a tailspin. Then she'd had to save Lois from dying from a fatal stab wound, using that power. And that had just added to the unsettled feeling Chloe had had for months.

But the latest revelation she'd had had Chloe feeling like not only had her world turned upside down, but it had also spun around ten times and done the loop de loop on her brain.

And it was why she now found herself in Washington DC. The Navy Yard, to be exact.

The guard at the front desk was exceedingly unhelpful.

"Sorry miss, can't let you in."

"Look, I just need to talk to somebody. The name is David, Ziva David." She had a feeling she was mispronouncing it, especially when the guard scowled at her, then proceeded to correct her.

"Well, officer Dav-eed is very busy. And unless you have an appointment with her ..."

Chloe sighed. The guard had asked for her id and she'd shown him her Daily Planet press pass. This hadn't done her any favours. Apparently they weren't too fond of reporters here. Even if she was not a full-fledged reporter yet. She was still classed as an intern and had one year of college left before she graduated.

Huffing and squaring her shoulders, Chloe turned away from the desk and started to walk to the main entry, trying to think of another way around the situation. She was so deep in thought that she didn't see the woman coming in the door and walking through the scanner.

Chloe crashed into the woman, making her drop whatever papers she was holding.

"Oh, great!" the woman complained as the papers fell to the floor in disarray.

Chloe immediately bent down to help her.

"God, I'm so sorry, I didn't see you," she said.

"Well, that's kind of obvious."

Chloe looked at the woman, taken aback by the dog collar, the jet-black hair in pigtails and the dark make-up. She'd only seen a person dressed as a Goth once, if she didn't count the Hallowe'en party she'd once gone to at the Luthor mansion when she'd still been in high school. The only other Goth she'd known had been a kid who'd worked in the Medical Examiner's office in Smallville.

She was wearing what appeared to be a suit and high heels which looked kind of odd to Chloe, especially with the dog collar.

"What?" the brunette asked tersely, her voice husky. "Do I have something on my face?"

"Oh god, sorry," Chloe said. "It's just ... you're a Goth."

The woman scowled.

"You have something against Goths?"

Chloe shook her head. "Uh, no, I ... well, I live in a small town and we don't get too many of those."

"Yeah, I doubt you would," the woman snorted.

"Uh, well, here," Chloe said, handing the woman the papers. "I'm really sorry for not watching where I was going."

Sighing, she started to walk away. She could feel the woman's eyes on her back, but kept walking.

"Hey, wait!" the woman said. "You dropped something."

Chloe turned and looked at her with a frown, then at the slip of paper she was holding. It was the notes Chloe had made on how to find Ziva.

"Do you know Ziva?"

Chloe shook her head. "No, uh, I don't. Um, but I think we might be, um, related. I really wanted to talk to her about it, but the guard wouldn't let me in and wouldn't call her."

"Yeah," the brunette said. "They can be kind of anal-retentive."

Chloe bit back a sarcastic remark, as the other woman was really just trying to help.

"Anyway, come on back with me and I'll see if I can find her. I'm Abby, by the way."

"Chloe."

"What do you do, Chloe?"

"Well, I'm a student at Met U and a reporter at the Daily Planet."

Abby raised an eyebrow at her. "A reporter?"

"Well, an intern. What about you?"

"Forensics."

"Really? That must be so interesting!"

"It has its moments. Nah, it's cool," she said with a laugh.

After a short quarrel with security, which resulted in Chloe getting a visitor's pass, Abby led the way into a maze of corridors.

"And how are we this fine morning?"

Special Agent Tim McGee and Officer Ziva David looked up as Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo walked in to the bullpen with a big grin on his face.

McGee looked at Ziva.

"I'm thinking he got some last night."

DiNozzo smirked at the junior agent.

"That's right, Probie. Met this girl at a club Friday night and we spent the whole weekend on the love train."

Ziva snorted. "More like lust train!"

"Jealous, Z-iva," DiNozzo said, placing emphasis on the first syllable of her name, knowing it irritated her no end.

"Of you and some blonde ... whatever," she said, clearly struggling to think of the word.

"The word you'd be looking for is bimbo," McGee answered.

"Thank you McGee," Ziva said, sitting down at her desk.

DiNozzo leaned casually on the edge of her desk, leering down at her.

"Aww, what's wrong, Z-iva? You know, you need to loosen up. Remember that time you and I went undercover in that hotel, pretending to be a married couple? Gotta tell you, having sex with you ..."

Ziva screwed up her nose. "Eww!" she said. "And we did not have sex."

"No, it's called virtual sex."

"Again, I say eww!"

"Aw come on, maybe you and I should talk Gibbs into ..."

He was interrupted by a sharp slap on the back of his head.

"Talk me into what, DiNozzo?" Gibbs said. "What have we got?" he added, ignoring his senior field agent.

"Morning boss," DiNozzo said picking up a file from his own desk. "Last night the wife of a gunnery sergeant reported a break-in. Husband's on the Plimmerton in the Gulf of Mexico and won't be back for six months."

"DiNozzo," Gibbs glared. "What does a break-in have to do with our current case?"

"Yeah, boss, well, there may be a connection to the rash of attacks at Norfolk."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow at him. "May be?"

"Right boss, I'll get McGee and Ziva to check out the scene."

"You do that," Gibbs growled.

"Ah, before you go anywhere," Abby broke in. "There's someone here to see Ziva."

DiNozzo looked around at Abby and the young blonde standing beside her. She was extremely pretty, petite, with wide, green eyes.

"No, Tony," Abby said.

Ziva was frowning at the girl.

"Do I know you?" she asked.

"Uh, not really. But I know you. Well, sort of. I think we're ... I think you're my cousin."

Ziva blinked rapidly.

"Would you mind repeating that?"

The blonde took a deep breath.

"Uh, yeah, my name is Chloe Sullivan, my parents are Gabriel and Moira Sullivan and well, I found these papers belonging to my mom and they said her real name was Moriah David. And that she was Mossad."

Chloe looked at the girl she believed was her cousin. It was strange. They didn't look anything alike and her mother definitely did not look at all like this woman. There was just no family resemblance at all. So how was this possible?

Ziva was muttering something in another language, which Chloe took to be Hebrew.

The man called Gibbs just glared at them.

"DiNozzo, McGee, go to Norfolk. Talk to the gunnery sergeant's wife. David, you and ..." He waved a hand at her.

"Chloe," Chloe prompted.

" ... Chloe, go talk, or whatever. Abs ..."

"I'll be in forensics," she said with a mock salute. She leaned forward and whispered in Chloe's ear. "Good luck."

Chloe looked at her in alarm. Gibbs was a good-looking man probably a few years younger than her mother. Chloe was really no judge of ages. She often felt there were times when her best friend Clark was much, much older than his birth certificate said he was, and other times when he seemed much, much younger. Of course, his alien heritage probably had a lot to do with that.

She got the impression that Gibbs was a hard boss, from the way everyone seemed to jump to attention, or whatever, when he was around.

Gibbs was practically glaring at her and she stared back at him, daring him to bark something at her. She wasn't sure who broke the stare first, but Ziva grabbed her arm.

"Why don't we go and have a talk," she said. "There is a coffee shop across the Navy yard."

"Oh, yeah, right," Chloe answered.

She followed Ziva into the elevator, looking anxiously back at the agent with the grey hair until the doors closed.

"Don't worry about Agent Gibbs," Ziva told her in a tone that really wasn't all that reassuring. "His bark is, um ..."

"Worse than his bite? Why do I get the feeling that's not entirely true?"

Ziva's smile was more like a grimace.

"He just comes across that way."

The doors opened and she followed Ziva back out past the security desk and into the yard.

"It's this way," Ziva said.

Chloe looked at the woman she believed was her blood relative. She didn't seem all that comfortable with English, or maybe it was just idioms she wasn't that comfortable with. Twice now she'd heard Ziva say something clichéd only to stumble over her words. She also had a trace of an accent.

"Um, so were you born here?" she asked Ziva.

"No, I was born in Israel. I only came here two years ago. Or almost three."

"Oh right, you're Mossad."

"How do you know that?" Ziva asked.

"Well, my mom left a letter. Sort of."

Ziva sat down in the coffee shop, ignoring the men and women in uniform.

"So, how did you find me?" she asked.

"It's sort of a long story. See, a while ago, my mom was, um, kidnapped. Oh, well, I don't know if kidnapped is exactly the right word for it. Let's just say that someone was holding her in a research facility."

"Why would they do that?" Ziva asked with a frown.

"It doesn't matter. I mean, she was a patient in a mental hospital. She was catatonic. She still is. The person who was holding her was trying an experimental drug on her to wake her up. And it worked, but ..."

"This was without her consent? Or yours?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"Who is this person?"

"Oh, you won't know him. Anyway, my mom told me she had some papers. In a safety deposit box. Well, a lot of other stuff started happening and I didn't have time to go find the papers. But when I did, I found out that my mom was Mossad. And that an Eli David was her brother."

"Well, it's a common name," Ziva answered.

"Yeah, but how many Eli Davids are in Mossad? Especially when they're the director."

"True," the brunette conceded. "Go on."

"Well, then I did some more research and I found out you were working with NCIS."

"Research?"

"I, uh, I'm a reporter, well, an intern really. At the Daily Planet in Metropolis."

"I see."

"But that's not why I'm here. I just ... wanted to know more about my mother."

"I never met your mother."

"But your father must have told you something."

Ziva shook her head. "I'm sorry. He's told me nothing."

Chloe's face fell in disappointment. Ziva sighed.

"I'm sorry to sound so pushy," Chloe said. "It's just ... well, have you ever had something happen to you that, it's like everything you thought you knew, about yourself, or the people you loved was really not what you thought at all? And the stuff you now know just makes you start questioning everything you thought you knew in the first place?"

Ziva nodded knowingly. "Yeah I have."

Chloe raised an eyebrow at her and Ziva went on.

"My brother. Well, my half-brother. Ari. He was Mossad and our father sent him under-cover as Hamas."

"Hamas? Aren't they like some sort of Islamic resistance group?"

"Yes, exactly."

"So ..."

"Ari was a double agent. He hated our father because he believed our father orchestrated an attack which killed his mother, who was an Arab woman. A doctor. She worked at a clinic in the Gaza strip."

"Do you think your father did it?"

"I believe so," Ziva answered, a flash of pain in her eyes. It seemed fairly clear that Ziva cared a great deal for her father, but she didn't quite trust him anymore.

"So, what happened to him? Ari?"

"He killed an NCIS agent. He was shot when he tried to kill Gibbs."

Chloe swallowed hard. Ziva had obviously had a lot to deal with all at once.

"I don't know what to do now," Chloe confessed quietly. "It's like I don't even know who my mother is anymore. And I can't even ask her."

"Because of her mental health?" Ziva nodded understandingly. "Look, why don't you stay a few days," she suggested. "We can perhaps figure this out together."

Chloe nodded. "Yeah, okay. Um, I'll need to call my cousin and my friend. Let them know."

"Of course."

Ziva looked at her phone.

"I should be getting back to work. Do you want to come with me or would you like to meet me at my place a little later?"

"I'm sure you have a lot of work to do," Chloe said, thinking Gibbs wouldn't appreciate her tagging along. "I'm just gonna do some sight-seeing, I guess, so I'll see you later?"

Ziva nodded and took out a small memo pad.

"Here is the address of my apartment. I should be home around seven. I will get something for dinner."

"Great," Chloe said, taking the slip of paper. "Thanks."

Gibbs barely even looked at her as Ziva returned to the bullpen. But Ziva paused by his desk anyway.

"I don't know," she said.

"Then find out," Gibbs said tersely. "Talk to your father."

"I doubt he will tell me anything," she answered.

Gibbs looked up at her, his steely blue gaze missing nothing.

"Find out," he repeated quietly but firmly. "If it is true that this woman was Mossad, then you need to know what her purpose was. We do not need another Ari."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Ziva knew she had no choice but to dig deeper. If Chloe was correct about her mother then there was a very good chance that Moira Sullivan had been a 'sleeper'. An agent sent so deep under cover that they were only required to perform certain tasks of intelligence.

But that didn't explain why Moira Sullivan was now catatonic. Ziva had already begun checking into the woman's background. Moira Sullivan had voluntarily committed herself to a psychiatric institution thirteen years earlier, when her young daughter Chloe had been eight years old.

Her husband, Gabriel, had spread the story that Moira had left them, clearly not wanting to burden his young daughter with the spectre of mental illness. But none of it explained why Moira would now be catatonic.

And it didn't explain what a supposed Mossad agent was doing raising a young family in a Kansas city.

Wanting to know more about the woman's condition, Ziva decided to seek out the one person who might be able to help. She made her way down to the building's basement, entering the morgue.

"Doctor Mallard, might I have a moment of your time?"

Donald Mallard, affectionately known as 'Ducky' to his colleagues, was considered a veteran at NCIS. He was probably the longest serving member of the team, next to Gibbs, that was, who had joined the then NIS in '92.

"Ziva," Ducky smiled. "What can I do for you today?"

"I have a little puzzle which I need some help to solve," she said.

"Is this anything to do with the young woman who came in to see you a short time ago?"

Ziva grinned ruefully. Ducky certainly didn't miss much.

"Her name is Chloe. And she thinks she may be my cousin."

Ducky looked interested. "Well, that must be something of a surprise. Were you aware you had family here?"

Ziva shook her head. "But that's only part of the puzzle. What can you tell me about catatonia?"

"Is this a forensic angle, or ..."

"Chloe's mother has been in a catatonic state for many years."

Ziva quickly filled in the medical examiner. Ducky had qualified in forensic psychology a few months ago but Tony often suggested that Ducky had an encyclopaedia for a brain.

"Well, my dear, it does sound most intriguing, but I'm afraid without actually examining this woman, I couldn't possibly diagnose her affliction. After all, forensic psychology is a far, far different field than psychiatry, although they both do have their similarities."

"Isn't there something you can tell me?" she asked.

"Well, of course, if you want more indepth information on the actual state of catatonia, then there is always the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. I find it rather dull, myself, but ... You know, catatonia itself was first described in 1874 as _Die Katatonie oder das Spannungsirresein, _by the German psychiatrist Karl Kahlbaum."

Ziva enjoyed the way Ducky's mind worked as much as anyone on the team, but a long-winded explanation of the history of catatonia was something she did not need right now.

"Ducky ... I appreciate the history lesson, but please, I need to know how a woman can go from seeming perfectly healthy one minute to catatonic the next."

"Well, as I said, without a clinical examination, Ziva, it would be difficult to determine what caused this woman's state. Perhaps it is best if you discuss this more with young Chloe."

"That's the problem, doctor. I'm not sure she would be all that understanding."

"I get the feeling there is much more to this young woman's appearance." Ducky peered at her, making her feel as if she was one of his 'patients', put under a microscope. "You said she was perhaps a cousin of yours? On your mother's side?"

"No. My father's. Chloe thinks her mother may have been Mossad."

"Ahh, of course. A sleeper. You know, there was a young woman who was an intern in the White House a few years ago and some believed she may have been a sleeper. A sort of modern-day Mata Hari, manoeuvring her way into the internship in an elaborate scheme to ..." Ducky paused as Ziva glared at him. "But of course, you have no interest in the sordid goings-on in the White House. I would suggest that you talk more with Chloe," Ducky said. "Compare notes. And perhaps you may want to talk to your father?"

Ziva sighed. "That's what I've been trying to avoid," she said.

Ducky nodded understandingly. He knew what she'd been going through with Eli.

"The devil is always in the details, my dear," he said, turning to go back to work.

Ziva frowned at him. There were times when she didn't understand English idioms at all. Even if they were the Queen's English. Ducky smiled, patting her shoulder.

"Do not overlook your father's importance in this. He may provide all the answers you need. Then again, he might not."

Well, that wasn't much help at all, Ziva thought. She sat in her cubicle, biting her nail contemplatively.

"You know that's bad for you right?"

Ziva looked up at Abby's husky voice.

"I'm sorry?"

"Biting your nails. Really bad habit."

Ziva noticed that Abby had changed from the suit and high heels to her normal black sweater and pants with black combat boots. She certainly seemed much more at ease now.

Ziva self-consciously dropped her hand and wiped it against her dark pants.

"Anything I can help with?" Abby asked.

Ziva shook her head. "Not really. I ..." She sighed, waving her hand at the information on Moira Sullivan on her computer. "I'm a trained agent. So why is this so difficult?"

"Maybe because you're too close to it," Abby suggested, leaving Ziva wondering if everyone knew her business. "Remember that time my ex-boyfriend was stalking me and we thought he was trying to kill me?"

"I thought he was," Ziva said.

"The point is, we all thought he was the one I was in danger from but it turned out it was that other guy who was pretending to be a federal marshal all to stop me from testifying in court. Have I mentioned that I hate court dates?"

"Once or twice," Ziva answered with a smile.

Chloe had spent the afternoon walking around, doing a little sightseeing, but she was barely aware of where she was going. Her mind was still focused on the things she had found.

She hadn't exactly been honest with Ziva when she'd told her how she'd learned about her mother's past. Well, she wasn't going to tell the woman who was apparently a trained Mossad agent, and now a US government agency investigator that she had come across the information by snooping in Lex Luthor's office.

Especially with the fact that Lex had been trying to force her mother to use her abilities several months ago. It was not that she cared whether Lex got caught. She just didn't want anyone digging too deep in case they found out more than they should. Like Clark's abilities.

Chloe had been searching for some way to protect her mother, knowing that Lex was still interested in using her mother's meteor power. She had pulled Jimmy aside in the bullpen.

"Jimmy, I really need your help on something," she said. "I need you to distract Lex."

Jimmy looked puzzled.

"Why would you want to distract Lex?"

Chloe sighed. She should have known that Jimmy was far too much of a goody-two-shoes. He'd practically been walking on eggshells around her since they'd broken up. Chloe liked Jimmy. A lot. But she couldn't be around someone who thought meteor freaks should be locked up. Especially since she'd learned she was one.

Deciding that she couldn't rely on Jimmy, Chloe tried her cousin. Lois had only been working at the Planet a few weeks. She was a good writer, although an atrocious speller and she had embraced the field of journalism with an enthusiasm that had even Clark wondering if Lois had somehow had a personality transplant.

Of course, Chloe thought with more than a hint of jealousy, that enthusiasm might have something to do with the hot new editor, Grant Gabriel. She was sure Lois and Gabriel were dating. If dating could really be the word for it.

The best thing about it though, was it gave her some blackmail material.

She grabbed her cousin's arm.

"Lo, I need you to do something for me."

Chloe quickly told her her plan. Lois was all for a quick foray into the lion's den, so to speak, although she wanted to know what it was all about. Chloe just heaved a sigh.

"Just go with it," she said.

Fortunately, Lois didn't press the issue, so that gave Chloe a little time to snoop. She managed to break into Lex's files on his 33.1 subjects and it was there she had found some of her mother's background. How Lex had dug up the fact that her mother was Mossad was another question. But she wasn't about to front up to Lex about it.

She hadn't told Lois or Clark about what she had found. Well, Clark was busy with Lana, trying to emulate domestic bliss a la Good Housekeeping on the farm, and Lois, of course, was busy with her new boyfriend.

And frankly, Chloe thought, she really didn't feel like sharing. Not this at least. Considering she barely knew what she was dealing with.

Chloe made her way to the apartment building on the address Ziva had given her, then used the spare key to get in. She climbed the stairs to Ziva's apartment.

When she went to open the door, something or someone rushed by her. Chloe gasped, stepping back and squashing herself against the wall. She realised a man had been inside Ziva's apartment. He was medium height, possibly Middle Eastern, with dark, curly hair. He ran past her, careful to hide his face from view.

Biting her lip, Chloe wondered whether she should call Ziva and tell her someone had been inside her apartment.

Ziva had a headache. DiNozzo and McGee had been arguing from the moment they had returned to the bullpen.

"Listen, McGeek, when we're out in the field, I am the boss. And when I say pick your shit up, Probie, I mean, pick your goddamn shit up."

It was a good thing, Ziva thought, that Gibbs was nowhere around, or DiNozzo would be the one with the headache.

McGee looked over at her.

"I thought you were supposed to be meeting us out on the job?" he asked.

"Something came in," she said.

"It's up, David," DiNozzo told her. She frowned at him. "Something came up."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Whatever."

McGee looked over her shoulder at her monitor.

"Delving into the schizophrenic mind," he read.

Ziva mentally began counting in her head, knowing the senior field agent would come up with something smart-assed. She'd barely counted to three before he smirked at her.

"Trying to tell us something, Ziva? Should we be talking to, I don't know, maybe the psychiatric unit at Bethesda?"

Ziva bit back a retort as Gibbs came in from MTAC, giving Tony a sharp smack on the back of the head. Tony rubbed his head, sending their boss a wounded look.

"What are you two standing around for? What did you find out?"

Ziva ignored the two men as they both began competing with each other to relate what they'd found out at the scene. She kept reading, knowing this was taking her nowhere.

Gibbs appeared in her line of vision.

"Did you call him?"

How did you tell your boss that the last person you wanted to talk to was the man who had raised you? Taught you everything he knew about being a Mossad agent?

"Call. Him." Gibbs told her in that no-nonsense tone of his.

Ziva knew she had no choice now. Delaying the inevitable was not going to help her find the truth.

The phone rang on her desk and she picked it up, eager to avoid the steely-eyed gaze of her boss and mentor.

"Officer David!"

"It's Chloe. I'm just at your apartment. There was someone in there."

"What do you mean?" Ziva asked.

"I mean, someone was in your apartment and they came running out as I got there. I don't think they were expecting me."

"All right. I'll be right there Chloe."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Chloe had followed the man out of the building and watched him get into a car, then gone back to the apartment to phone Ziva and wait for her. The Mossad agent was there within a few minutes. Followed by the two men who were apparently her partners.

"What are you two doing here?" Ziva asked, turning to glare at them.

"Boss thought it might be related to the break-ins on base," DiNozzo told her. Chloe noticed him trying to get a good look at her, but Ziva quickly stepped in front of her. Chloe bit back a smile. They barely knew each other, but already the older woman was trying to be protective.

"You mean, you thought," Ziva told him.

Chloe watched as the two exchanged words. She grinned, glancing at the other man, who was also watching, a look of exasperation on his face.

"Reminds me of another two people I know," she told the man with a chuckle.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, they're always at each other's throats. Deep down though, they really like each other. A friend and I have a bet on how long it will take for them to see that all the arguing they do is just foreplay."

Chloe grinned. Lois and Clark would probably deny it, and there was the added complication with Lana, but she had a feeling that Clark's relationship with Lana was ultimately doomed.

She looked at the other man. He was cute, in an older guy type of way. Stocky build, dark blonde hair. DiNozzo was the better looking of the two men, although she guessed he was far more arrogant for it. The second man seemed to have more of an approachable look about him. Hmm, she didn't even know his name.

"I'm Chloe," she said. "Chloe Sullivan."

"Tim McGee."

Ziva and DiNozzo were still going at it.

"Why don't they just get a room?" Chloe chortled.

Ziva turned and stared at her. "What?"

McGee was laughing at the incredulous expressions on both Ziva and DiNozzo's faces.

"Well, she has a point."

"Shut up, Geeky McGeekerson," DiNozzo snapped.

"Great comeback Tony!" McGee snorted. "Get that out of Sears catalog?"

Chloe rolled her eyes as the two men began squabbling like little boys fighting over sharing their favourite toy.

"Can we please focus on the real reason we're here?" Ziva growled.

"Sorry," Chloe said, not repentant at all. "Just making an observation."

"Well don't! Now, tell me about this man you saw coming out of my apartment."

"Well, I didn't see his face. He was hiding it. I think he was Middle Eastern, but I could be wrong. He had dark olive skin, black hair, sort of longish and curly, about average height – no more than about five eight. He must have heard me coming because he came running out of your apartment like the devil was after him."

"Anything else?"

"Yeah, I followed him outside and he got into a black SUV. Here, I got the licence plate. I could have called my friend in the DMV but he's in Kansas and I doubt whether ..."

"Don't worry about it," Ziva told her, going into her apartment.

Chloe watched as the woman began looking around.

"Anything missing, Ziva?" McGee asked after a few minutes.

"Not that I can see." She looked at the two men. "I wonder what he could have wanted."

"Maybe he's an old boyfriend," DiNozzo suggested.

"Any old boyfriends know they don't have the right to break-in to my apartment."

"Well," McGee said, grunting as he got up from crouching beside the door. He'd been examining the lock. "By the look of it, he didn't actually break-in. He must have had a key."

Ziva looked worried. "I don't give my key to just anyone," she said, looking pointedly at Chloe. "Not without good reason. And there is no reason why any male of my acquaintance would have a key."

Clearly not even her partners, Chloe thought. Was Ziva cagey for a reason or just overly cautious?

The fact that nothing had been stolen had Ziva even more worried. Could her apartment have been bugged, she wondered. She did a cursory examination, not wanting to worry Chloe even more than she already was, and returned to the office to run the licence plate number.

The number came back as belonging to a rental vehicle. Rented to a Barukh Malin, a former Israeli who held US citizenship. She put the image of his licence photo up on the plasma screen.

"Know him?" DiNozzo asked.

"No," Ziva said shortly.

The name wasn't familiar, but that didn't mean anything. It could have been an alias. But it did tell her one thing. The man could be Mossad. It seemed an awful coincidence that he had been in her apartment the same day that Chloe turned up claiming to be her cousin.

"You think he was Mossad?" McGee asked.

"Yes, I'm thinking he was Mossad. But whether he was sent by my father ..."

"Why? You've been here over two years. What could your father ..."

"I don't know. I've been avoiding this, but I know I have to talk to him now."

"Look, I can help, if you want. I can probably find out more about Chloe's mother."

"It just doesn't make any sense," Ziva told him.

"We'll get to the bottom of it," he promised her.

There were times when Ziva felt like a complete outsider when it came to her colleagues, and other times when she felt like they were closer to her than any of her blood relatives. Often Gibbs felt more like her father than her boss, although she would never admit that to him. Gibbs was tough on them, sure, but for good reason. And he never asked anything of them that he wouldn't do, or hadn't done before himself.

Unlike her own father, she thought, who had raised her to be a Mossad agent from the time she could speak. Eli David was hard and strict and had never been a loving father.

With a sigh, Ziva got up and found a private alcove away from the prying eyes and ears of her colleagues and made the phone call she had been avoiding for most of the day.

"Ziva. What can I do for you?" Eli asked.

There was nothing for it but to get straight to the point. Eli wasn't much for small talk.

"I had a visitor here today. A girl claiming to be my cousin."

"Oh? What is this girl's name?"

"Chloe Sullivan. She's about twenty years old. From Kansas."

"I know nothing of this."

"What about Moriah David?" she asked.

There was a slight hesitation before Eli answered.

"I do not know this woman," he said sharply. He was lying. "If this woman is claiming to be a blood relative ..."

"She claims nothing. The woman is in a catatonic state in a mental hospital in California. It is Chloe who ..."

"I know nothing of this," he repeated. "This Chloe is either lying or mistaken."

Ziva swore under her breath. What was her father trying to hide?

"Did you send someone from Mossad here?" she asked. "Perhaps to, um ..." Now what was the phrase Americans used? "Keep a bead on me?"

"I am quite certain you can take care of yourself, Ziva. I would have no need to send anyone to watch over you. Is that all?"

"Yes," she answered.

"Good." The phone clicked on the other end abruptly.

A shadow fell over her and she looked up.

"What did he say?" Gibbs asked.

"He knows nothing about it."

"Is he telling the truth?"

"I don't think so."

"What are you going to do about it?" her boss asked.

"What can I do?" she shrugged. "He will clearly not talk to me about it."

"Then he obviously has something to hide," Gibbs told her.

Ziva couldn't understand it. It did sound that way, but she had to wonder if there was more to it than her father hiding something. He normally didn't give much away, but from the tone in his voice, she could tell that there was something else. A sense of bitterness, perhaps.

"Where's Chloe now?" Gibbs asked.

"Down in forensics with Abby. I wasn't going to let her stay alone at the apartment."

Chloe had assured her she could look after herself, and Ziva had no doubt of that, but she wasn't prepared to budge on the issue. If someone had been inside her apartment, someone who was perhaps Mossad, for whatever purpose, then there was no way she was going to allow Chloe to get in the middle of it.

Gibbs was back at his desk, picking up the phone.

"Gibbs," he said sharply, listening for a moment, then hanging up the phone. "Grab your gear," he ordered.

"What's up, boss?" Tony asked.

"Norfolk. Our little case of break-ins just took a turn to murder. Corporal arrived home to find his wife dead."

"Uh," Ziva said.

"Call Abby on the way and tell her to keep your ... Chloe with her. Move it, people!"

Ziva nodded, grabbing her bag from her desk and hurrying to join the others in the lift. She dialled Abby's number.

"Abby? Is Chloe still with you?"

"Yeah. Hold on." She heard Abby handing the phone over. Then Chloe came on the line.

"What's up?"

"I have to go out on a case. Will you be all right to stay with Abby until I get back?"

"Of course. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

As soon as they reached the truck there was a brief squabble over who would get to drive. Ziva's driving was notorious. Her first time driving over two years ago she had almost killed them by driving into oncoming traffic. At least, that was how Tony always related it. Ziva didn't think her driving had been that bad.

She considered her driving had much improved since then, but Tony still didn't trust her.

"I'd like to actually get to Norfolk in one piece," he told her.

"If I drove we'd get there much faster," she pointed out.

"That's exactly my point," DiNozzo answered.

"Gibbs drives much faster than me," she told him.

McGee sighed, grabbing the keys from Tony.

"That's it. I'm driving."

Ziva smirked as she grabbed the passenger door, glaring at Tony, daring him to try and fight her for it. She couldn't blame McGee, really. Usually he ended up in the back with all the equipment, which meant he was often tossed around, leaving him with a few bruises.

DiNozzo grumbled but got in the back as McGee drove out. They arrived at the address just as Gibbs was getting out of his car. Tony pulled at her arm as they followed their boss into the house.

"So, Ziva, your cousin, is she, uh ..."

"She's a little young for you, Tony, don't you think?"

"I wasn't talking to you, McGoo," Tony snapped.

"Whoa!" McGee said, holding up his hands. "I surrender. I'm just saying, Tony, the kid's only twenty years old."

"And why do you always have to assume that I'm asking about a girl because I'm interested in her?"

"Because that's usually the reason. And she is pretty cute."

"Hypocrite," Tony snorted.

"Wait a minute," McGee said, protesting as he strode after Tony.

Gibbs called from the doorway.

"Elf Lord, hurry it up. I don't have all night."

Ziva sighed. This was going to be a very long day.

Chloe continued to sit watching Abby at work, chatting amiably.

"So, where do you, uh, hail from?" she asked.

"New Orleans. You?"

"Kansas. Metropolis, originally, then we moved to Smallville, well, me and my dad, when I was in junior high."

"And you're a reporter?"

"Yeah. Well, technically I'm still an intern at the Daily Planet. I work there with my cousin, Lois. She just started getting into reporting in the last couple of years. I've always been interested in journalism. My second grade teacher told me I had an aptitude for writing."

"That was sort of the same thing for me with forensics. Well, science anyway. I used to love blowing things up in the chem lab in high school."

Abby turned and looked at her curiously.

"So, Ziva said this is something to do with your mom?"

"Does everyone know?"

Abby laughed. "Yeah, secrets don't stay secret for long around here. Except when they do," she said, frowning. Chloe blinked at the older woman, wondering what she meant by that, but didn't question it.

"You know," Abby continued, "they're probably going to be a while at the crime scene. At least a couple of hours. Why don't we sit down with a Kaf-Pow?"

"Kaf-Pow? I think I'll stick to coffee," Chloe grinned.

"Kaf-Pow's great. It's like total a total caffeine hit. Especially if you're an addict. Well, Gibbs seems to think I am."

"Mm, but there's nothing like the smell of a good coffee," Chloe sighed contentedly.

The two girls got their respective drinks and sat comfortably on the couch in the smaller lab off the main one.

"So, tell me more about Gibbs," Chloe said. She'd sensed the affection from the forensics specialist.

"What can I say? Gibbs is Gibbs."

"He's kind of ..."

"Yeah, he is with people he doesn't know. I guess you could say he's an acquired taste. But we love him."

"He doesn't intimidate you at all?"

"Well, you have to know how to get around him, that's all. Tell me more about your mom."

"There's not much to tell, really. My mom first left when I was five. I came downstairs one morning and my dad was trying to make waffles. He wasn't a good cook in those days."

"Why did she leave?"

"I don't know. Dad never said. Anyway, she came back after a few months. I guess they were just having a trial separation. And then she left for good when I was eight. Voluntarily committed herself to a mental institution. They said it was hereditary."

"Is that something that worries you?"

"Sometimes, yeah. But I found some notes from the doctors at the institution and they said she was delusional."

"Where is your mom now?"

"She's in Star City. At a hospital there. A friend of mine helped me get her there."

"Why the move?"

"Oh, I just felt she wasn't getting the care she needed at Fairview," Chloe said, knowing it sounded evasive. But how was she supposed to tell Abby that her mother was some kind of meteor freak? Abby was a scientist. She'd want proof. And there was no way Chloe was going to offer her mother up as some kind of lab rat.

They continued to chat for a little while until the team brought in some forensic samples for Abby to study. Ziva came in.

"Chloe, I'm sorry. It looks like this will be a night ... thing," she said, frowning.

"You mean an all-nighter," Chloe said. "That's okay. I can go back to your apartment."

"I really don't want you there on your own. Not after ..."

"Ziva, I can handle myself. Really. You'd be surprised, actually."

Ziva looked uncertain, but she nodded.

"Fine. But don't let anyone in."

Chloe grinned at her new cousin's over-protectiveness. If only Ziva knew the things she'd had to deal with in Smallville, she thought.

She left the Navy yard and headed back to Ziva's apartment. As she walked along the street, she heard her phone ringing. Digging it out of her purse, she looked at the caller id.

"Oliver? What's up?"

"I thought you should know. The doctors tell me your mom received a visitor this afternoon."

Chloe frowned. "Who?"

"I don't know. But I'm getting the security tapes sent over. Where are you?"

"DC. Just working on another project."

"I'll call you when I know more, okay?"

"Thanks," she said. As she hung up, she observed a car moving slowly along the road. Chloe ignored it, thinking they had just slowed to check her out and turned to go up the steps to the entry to Ziva's apartment building.

Suddenly there was the sound of someone running and a hand grabbed her arm. Chloe turned and looked up at the man.

"What is this?" she asked.

A smelly rag was clamped over her mouth and Chloe struggled, kicking out as hard as she could. But another hand held her fast, making her drop her purse. Then everything went black.

Ziva rubbed her eyes. The night's investigation had barely started and she was already exhausted. She barely looked up when a coffee was placed in front of her.

"You looked like you could use it," McGee said quietly.

"Thanks," she said, picking up the coffee. Then her phone rang and she picked it up, putting down the cup. "Officer David!"

"Yeah, Ms David? This is Roberts. The doorman at your apartment. You know a Chloe Sullivan right?"

"Yes! Why?"

"Well, I have her bag here, Ms David. She dropped it on the steps."

Ziva's heart began to pound. Something had happened. She could feel it.

"I'll be right over," she said. She jumped up from her chair, spilling the coffee all over the papers on her desk. She swore in her own language.

McGee quickly grabbed some paper towels and began helping her mop up.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I knew I shouldn't have let her go back to the apartment alone," she told him.

"I'll drive," he said, taking her keys. She looked at him and he just looked kindly at her. "You're too upset to drive."

Nodding, she followed him out. The car was filled with a heavy silence as they drove to her apartment.

The doorman was waiting for her. He handed over the bag.

"Did anyone see anything?" she asked, looking through the bag. Nothing seemed to be missing. So it couldn't have been a robbery.

"No. But you can check the security tapes," he said.

"I'll do that," she said abruptly.

McGee nodded and spoke to the doorman.

"Can you get us those tapes? We can take them back to the office with us."

"Sure. Give me a few minutes."

It wasn't long before Ziva had her answer. McGee brought up the security footage on the plasma. The camera had a good view of the doors to the building. Enough for them to determine what had happened to Chloe.

Ziva sighed as she watched Chloe struggling with two men, then go limp. It had been less than thirty minutes after she'd left NCIS.

"The question is: who," Gibbs said behind her, startling her. Ziva hadn't even known he'd been standing there.

"That's a very good question," she said.

"Then find out."

"It's not NCIS jurisdiction," Ziva pointed out.

"No. But she's supposedly family, isn't she?"

Ziva stared once more at the plasma screen. What had happened? And why Chloe?


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

"All right. What do we have so far?" Gibbs asked.

"Chloe called me this afternoon saying someone had tried to break into my apartment. McGee, DiNozzo and I went to investigate. The door was open but the lock did not appear to have been tampered with."

"She gave a fairly good description of the man and the vehicle he was driving. We matched the plates to a vehicle rented by a former Israeli national, now living here in Washington."

"Address?"

"We're going to check it out in the morning," Ziva promised.

"Why not now?"

"It's the middle of the night, boss," DiNozzo told him. Gibbs sent him a death glare. "Right," DiNozzo smiled.

"And I assume your father told you he knows nothing of this?"

"You would assume correctly, Gibbs," Ziva told him stiffly, still smarting from her earlier conversation with her father. If it could be called a conversation.

"Check him out," Gibbs ordered. "DiNozzo, I want you to stay on the Norfolk case. Go down and talk to Ducky and see what he has."

"On it boss," DiNozzo answered, looking vaguely disappointed that he was not going to be investigating the kidnapping.

"McGee, find out everything you can on Moira Sullivan. See if there is a connection to the kidnapping."

McGee nodded knowingly. It seemed an awful coincidence that Chloe would be kidnapped the very day she came to Washington to find out more about her mother's past. But as Gibbs often said, there was no such thing as coincidence.

Ziva found the address of the man who had been at her apartment and drove quickly to the building. She made her way up the stairs to his door, knocking loudly for a few moments.

The door was opened with the chain still on and a man's face appeared. He had clearly been sleeping as he looked as if he was barely awake.

"Yes?" he asked.

"Barukh Malin? Ziva David. NCIS."

The man's eyes widened. "Oh! Officer David! I was looking for you earlier." He hurriedly pulled the chain off and opened the door, then frowned at her in puzzlement. "But it's three o'clock in the morning. Why are you here?"

Ziva followed the man inside. He smiled, although the smile was wary.

"I'll make some coffee," he said.

"What were you doing at my apartment?" she asked.

"I hoped you would be there," he said, putting the coffee on to brew.

Ziva took a moment to look around the apartment. The sofa she was sitting on appeared to be old and dilapidated. The fabric was worn through in several places and she could feel the springs underneath her. There were no pictures on the wall, or on the shelves, and an old tv sat in the corner.

The man came over with the coffee.

"It is not strong. I do not like it strong."

"I'm sure it's fine. Why were you looking for me?" she asked.

"I am ... was Mossad. I was hoping you could talk to your father on my behalf. You see, since I came here to the United States, I turned my back on Mossad. But you know what it is like. They do not like to give up their people easily."

"How long have you been in America?" she asked.

"It will be ... hmm, five years now. I was granted citizenship less than six months ago."

"I don't know what good I will be able to do. My father and I barely speak," she said. That was something of an understatement.

"I see."

Ziva frowned at him, sipping the bitter coffee and trying not to show how bad it was. It just didn't seem plausible that he would come to her, when there were others in more senior positions who could have talked to Eli.

"Why were you inside my apartment?"

The man frowned at her. "I ..."

"You almost ran into someone in the hall when you were leaving. A girl."

"Ah, yes, blonde, very pretty. When I went to visit, I saw your door was open. I knocked and called out but there was no answer. I thought I heard a noise and went inside to investigate, but there was nothing. I decided to leave and return again later. That is when your friend saw me."

Ziva kept her thoughts to herself. She didn't think it would be prudent at this point to accuse the man of having something to do with Chloe's kidnapping.

She returned to the Navy Yard, convinced the man had had nothing to do with the kidnapping. For one thing, she thought, she was sure Chloe would have seen a car and if it had been the same car the man had used, then Chloe would have been more alert to what was going on. From what she had seen of the security footage, Chloe had been taken by surprise.

"I think he's lying," she told Gibbs. "But I cannot put my foot on what it is exactly."

"Finger," Gibbs corrected automatically.

"Oh."

"Go work with McGee," he told her.

She watched as he strode out, obviously heading for the direction of Abby's lab.

"Abs, what have you got?"

"Depends on the case," Abby told him.

He gave her a look and she smiled.

"I hate to disappoint, Gibbs, but from what I can tell from the crime scene, it was a snatch and grab. The only clue they left behind was Chloe's bag. Oh, but get this, she was talking to an Oliver Queen on her cell shortly before she was taken."

Gibbs couldn't mistake the awe in her voice. She was practically bouncing in her combat boots, her pigtails flying.

"Who the hell is Oliver Queen?"

"Only the most eligible bachelor on this coast and any other. I mean, the guy's rich, gorgeous; has about a dozen properties in half a dozen states ..."

"Abs ..." he said tersely.

"Look, Chloe told me her mom was in a hospital in Star City. That's where Oliver Queen was born, FYI."

Gibbs frowned. Why would a young reporter like Chloe Sullivan be on a multi-billionaire's speed dial?

"What else?"

"Well, Chloe told me some stuff about her mom before she left. Like her mom originally left home when Chloe was five and her parents were separated for a few months, then she came back and everything was cool until Chloe was eight. That's when her mom was committed to Fairview."

"Thanks Abs," he said, taking Chloe's cellphone with him. He would get McGee to look into Chloe's contact list.

Returning to the bullpen, he looked at McGee and Ziva, who were bent over McGee's computer.

"Well?" he asked.

"I found Moira Sullivan's records from Fairview Hospital," McGee told him. "From what I read here, Mrs Sullivan claimed she had the power to control others like her. I have no idea what that means, but doctors diagnosed her with paranoid schizophrenia and delusions. About a year after they began treating her she slipped into a catatonic state. She's been that way ever since. Until last year that is."

"What happened last year?"

"She was released from Fairview into the care of a Doctor Lowe, who worked out of a research facility owned by Luthorcorp."

Ziva frowned, clearly remembering something.

"Wait a minute. I remember this. Chloe said something about her mother being taken to a research facility and an experimental drug used on her without her consent."

Gibbs nodded. "Get Lex Luthor in here," he said brusquely.

Ziva managed to get a couple of hours sleep by napping at her desk. She knew the first twenty-four hours of a kidnapping were crucial to the survival of the victim but she did not want to think about that. She barely knew Chloe, but already the girl was important to her.

She still wondered how Moira could have ended up in a catatonic state. But the only person who really had the answers was Moira herself.

"Ziva? You still here?"

She looked up at Ducky, bleary-eyed.

"I've been here all night," she said.

"Shouldn't you go home and get some sleep?"

"I can't," she told the English medical examiner. "Not until I find some answers about what's happened to Chloe."

"You won't help young Chloe if you don't rest."

"I just don't understand any of it," she wailed, aware of the way she was sounding. Mossad agents didn't wail. They didn't complain; they just got on with the job.

"What exactly is bothering you, my dear?"

"Well, Moira for one."

"Yes, I have been thinking about that one myself. Did you know that there is a theory that some medication used to treat mental disorders can often trigger them? Depending on the dosages, of course."

"What? How can that be?" she asked incredulously.

"Well, it does depend on the patient themselves and whether they are indeed afflicted with the condition they have been diagnosed with."

"Are you saying the doctors may have caused Moira's catatonia?"

"It is possible, although, as I told you before, without examining the patient, I could not be sure."

"But this answers it." Ziva frantically searched through the papers on her desk, looking for the printout of Moira's file. "She claimed she had some kind of power and the doctors diagnosed her with paranoid schizophrenia." She frowned up at the man. "Do you think it's possible she was telling the truth?"

"Well, Ziva, the human mind is a highly complex machine. Perhaps you need to do a little more digging to prove your hypothesis, or disprove it, as the case may be."

She nodded. He was right. She needed to do some more digging.

Getting up from her chair, she hurried over to McGee's desk.

"McGee, I need you to look into something for me," she said excitedly.

"What, exactly?"

"I want you to find out if there have been other cases like Moira Sullivan."

"What do you mean? Other patients in catatonic states?"

"No. People who claimed to have powers."

McGee frowned. She knew he was sceptical, but she sent him a pleading look. He nodded and turned back to his monitor, beginning to type of the computer.

DiNozzo came in, looking completely refreshed, even for someone who had probably had only about four hours sleep.

"Well, good morning, Z-iva. Probie. How are we this fine morning?"

"Shut up, Tony," Ziva told him shortly. She turned away from him, intending to go out and get some coffee.

"What crawled up her butt?" Tony asked, loud enough for her to hear.

"Shut up, Tony," McGee replied.

By the time she returned with some coffee for herself and for McGee, she had managed to calm down considerably. Sometimes DiNozzo just pissed her off. Couldn't he see she was worried about Chloe? The more time had passed, the greater the chance of not finding her at all.

DiNozzo reached for the cup she had in the carrier. Ziva quickly dodged.

"It's not for you," she snapped. "It's for McGee. Unlike you, DiNozzo, we have been working all night trying to find out what happened to Chloe."

"Doesn't look like you've made much progress," he smirked.

Gibbs slapped him on the back of the head.

"Hard at work as usual, I see, DiNozzo."

"Yes boss," DiNozzo answered, going to his desk. "There have been several break-ins not just at the base but also in the greater DC area. From what I can tell, it's a gang who have been working the territory. Same MO ..."

Ziva tuned him out and looked at McGee.

"What did you find?" she asked.

"You were right. In the past several years there have been a number of reports of people claiming to have special powers. And Chloe seems to have been in the thick of it."

"Are you saying she ..."

"No," McGee shook his head. "She's just reported on it."

Ziva looked down at the printouts he handed her. Several were from pages of the Smallville High newspaper The Torch.

_Can Any Cell Hold Her? _ one headline proclaimed.

There were other stories. One of a teenager killing others with these so-called powers. Chloe seemed to have formulated a theory that the abilities were caused by meteor rock found scattered in areas around the town. Smallville had been hit by two meteor showers. One in 1989 and the other in 2005. Both had practically decimated the town and killed a few residents.

Ziva was so deep into the reading, she didn't notice the cellphone ringing until it became more insistent. She looked up, realising it was the phone on McGee's desk. Chloe's.

"Hello?" she said when she picked it up.

"Chloe?" Ziva glanced at the caller id. Clark.

"No. This is Ziva."

"Where's Chloe?"

"That's what I'd like to know. Why don't we start with you telling me who you are."

"Clark Kent. Chloe's my friend. What are you doing with her phone?"

Ziva decided to hold back on saying anything to Clark for now.

"Didn't she tell you?"

"She told me she was going to visit someone in DC," he said, his voice rising with anxiety. "The only person I know of in DC is my mom."

"Your mom?"

"Um, where exactly ... who are you?"

"Officer Ziva David. I'm with NCIS."

"NCIS?"

Gibbs, his attention caught by the conversation, gestured for the phone. He glanced at the caller id and Ziva nodded, handing it over.

"Clark?" he said. "This is Special Agent Gibbs." He listened for a moment. "Well, if you happen to be here in DC, why don't you come on in and we can talk about it?"

There was a long pause, then Ziva heard Gibbs give Clark directions. He handed her the handset.

"As soon as he comes in I want you to interview him," he said.

"Are we treating him as a suspect, or ..."

"Play it by ear," Gibbs told her.

Shortly after, a call came through from the front guard. Gibbs hung up his phone and looked at Ziva.

"Lex Luthor's here."

Clearly Gibbs had decided not to trust the man as he was led to an interrogation room. Her boss gestured for her to wait in the observation room. She looked over the bald man, who seemed around her age, or perhaps a little younger. He was dressed in a conservative suit which probably cost more than her monthly salary.

"Thank you for coming in, Mr Luthor," Gibbs said.

"I'm happy to help, Agent Gibbs. And please, call me Lex."

"Mr Luthor," Gibbs began, making it clear he wasn't interested in playing politics with the bald man. "How well do you know Chloe Sullivan?"

"She works for me. Well, technically not yet. But I'm making moves to take over the Daily Planet."

"I see. How long have you known her?"

"Since I arrived in Smallville," Lex said smoothly. "Almost seven years."

"Didn't she testify against your father a couple of years ago?"

"She did." Lex frowned. "Is Chloe in some kind of trouble?"

"I'll ask the questions. Tell me about her mother."

"I don't even know her mother," Lex said. "Chloe's mother left long before she and her father moved to Smallville."

"I see. And why did they move to Smallville?"

"Chloe's father was offered a management position at our fertiliser plant. Why are you asking about Chloe's mother?"

Gibbs looked down at his papers. "Do you know a Dr Lowe?"

"He works for me. At one of my research facilities."

"And were you aware Moira Sullivan was a test subject at this facility last year? Without her consent?"

Lex frowned. The lie rolled smoothly off his tongue, but for all that, Ziva could see a slight tic in his jaw.

"I was not aware of any of this."

"You had no knowledge of an experimental drug being used on Moira Sullivan?"

"As I just told you, Agent Gibbs, I was not aware of any of this. If any of my staff have been performing illegal experiments then trust me I would put a stop to it immediately. What is this about?"

"Where were you last night? About nine-thirty?"

"I was in Smallville. Home. Alone. My staff can attest to that."

Well, that was obvious. The man would clearly have had someone else working for him if he was behind Chloe's kidnapping.

"Tell me something, Mr Luthor, are you aware that Moira Sullivan had a different name?"

"Well, obviously," Lex smirked, "her maiden name wouldn't have been Sullivan."

"Do you know the name Moriah David?" Gibbs asked, still pursuing the topic relentlessly.

"Should I?" Lex asked.

Again Ziva caught the subtle shift in his body language. Lex Luthor was a good liar. But he would never fool a trained investigator like herself. And clearly Gibbs wasn't fooled either.

"I think you're lying to me, Mr Luthor. I think you not only know exactly who Moriah David is, I also think you know something about what has happened to Chloe."

Lex glared at him. "I really don't appreciate your insinuations, Agent Gibbs."

"I don't care whether you appreciate them or not," Gibbs returned. "If I find you have had anything to do with Chloe Sullivan's disappearance then trust me there will not be a rock you can crawl under."

"I could have your badge for this," Lex hissed. "Do you have any idea who I am?"

"Do I look like I care?" Gibbs hissed back.

Ziva watched as Lex was dismissed, then approached Gibbs.

"Was that wise?" she asked. "He probably has some influence in government circles."

"I've no doubt," Gibbs said dryly. "What's rule number sixteen, Ziva?"

She thought for a minute, but it didn't come to mind. Gibbs leaned forward, his lips almost against her ear.

"If someone thinks they have the upper hand, break it."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Chloe woke to find herself handcuffed to a chair. Well, she thought wryly, at least I'm not strapped down in a lab. There's progress.

She shook off the drowsiness and looked around her. She was in a small room bare of any furniture except for a second chair which leaned against the wall. The window had been boarded up, but a small sliver of sunlight peeked through a gap.

Biting her lip, Chloe slumped in the chair, lifting her hands. The short chain on the handcuffs keeping her locked to each arm of the chair clinked slightly. She thought about calling for Clark, but had no idea what his range was. Would he even hear her?

She still had no idea who had taken her, or why. She hadn't recognised the vehicle. It had definitely not been the same vehicle she had seen earlier. Her reporter's curiosity was piqued. Even with the bad situation she was in.

The door on the far side of the room opened and she turned her head automatically toward it.

"Good, you're awake. How are you feeling?"

"Peachy. Wanna tell me why you kidnapped me?"

"We'll get to that. We've been watching you for some time, Chloe Sullivan."

Chloe cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Watching me? You wouldn't be working for, I don't know, Lex Luthor, by any chance?"

The man smirked at her, refusing to answer the question.

"Tell me, who was the woman you were with yesterday? The brunette?"

He meant Ziva.

"My lesbian lover," she said snarkily. "What's it to you?"

"She works for NCIS."

"What's your point?"

The man just smirked again. "What is this woman's connection with you?"

Chloe thinned her lips and refused to answer, staring at the man resolutely. If he wasn't going to answer any of her questions, she wasn't going to answer any of his.

Gibbs glared at Luthor as the bald man began to pass him. Luthor continued to swagger, arrogant enough to think that Gibbs had nothing on him. Ziva stood beside him, looking as if she was wondering if Gibbs had totally lost his mind.

They began to follow the guard escorting Luthor out of the building. Suddenly a tall blonde man came in, escorted by another agent. He saw Luthor and immediately made a beeline for him, pushing him against the wall. His expression was one of rage.

"Where's Chloe? What the hell have you done with her?"

"Well, hello to you too, Oliver," Luthor said smoothly. "I haven't done anything with her."

"You're a liar, Luthor. We both know what you've been doing to her."

Luthor smirked. "Why, Oliver, anyone would think you had feelings for her."

"You ... don't know anything about my relationship with her," he hissed.

Luthor glanced toward Gibbs, who had already decided to let this play out. He stood with his arms folded, glaring coldly back at Luthor.

Oliver pushed Luthor up against the wall again, making his head bang painfully on the dry wall.

"I swear if you have anything to do with this, I will ream your ass."

Luthor snickered. "Well, sorry, Ollie, but I don't swing that way."

"Get out of my sight," Queen hissed. "Before I do something I might regret."

Luthor glared back at the taller man, then took a swing at him. Gibbs decided it was time to step in.

"That's enough, Luthor." He looked at the guard. "Escort Mr Luthor from the building. But don't go far," he told the bald man. "I've got a feeling we'll be seeing each other again soon."

"You can count on that," Luthor hissed, shooting Oliver a nasty look.

Ziva looked at Gibbs.

"Ream his ... ass?" she said, genuinely perplexed. "What does that mean?"

"It's slang, Ziva," Gibbs explained. "Usually meant to severely reprimand someone."

"But it's also used in another way," Oliver told her kindly. "As Lex implied."

Ziva was still clearly puzzled. Gibbs leaned down and whispered in her ear. Her eyes widened as she began to get the gist of what her boss was trying to tell her.

"But that's ..."

Gibbs moved away, looking at the tall, brown-eyed man. Oliver Queen smiled.

"I'm guessing you're Agent Gibbs."

"That I am."

"Oliver Queen."

"Yeah, I got that. Follow me, Mr Queen."

Ziva paused, still stunned by what had been implied. She wasn't naive by any means, and she knew about homosexuality. But to have it so blatantly shoved in her face, so to speak, was something she hadn't been prepared for.

Gibbs stopped walking, turning and looking at her.

"Coming or not David!"

Ziva hurried to catch up with the two men, wondering why Gibbs was leading Oliver Queen away from the interrogation room and to the interview room. She frowned, watching as Gibbs sat down in one of the comfortable leather chairs, gesturing to the blonde billionaire to take a seat opposite him.

Ziva had done a little research on the man as soon as she'd learned he would be coming in. He wasn't married, but he was known as something of a playboy. A year ago, he had spent about six months in Metropolis. She guessed that was where he'd got to know Chloe.

Oliver Queen was a couple of inches taller than DiNozzo, and just as good-looking. And she did not think that, she thought with a grimace.

Gibbs was talking and Ziva decided she better pay attention.

"Want to tell me what that was all about?" he asked.

"Lex and I go way back. Old school buddies."

"Buddies?" Ziva asked. "You did not look like buddies. More like enemies."

"It's an expression. The truth is, Lex and I have never gotten along."

"What makes you think he has something to do with Chloe's disappearance?" Gibbs said.

"All I can tell you is there is a history between them."

"Tell us what you know about Smallville and these stories about meteor mutations."

Oliver looked at Gibbs steadily, clearly sizing him up.

"Why do you want to know?"

"We check out every angle," Ziva told him. "And we do need to know if it has something to do with what happened to Chloe."

"Well, look no further than Luthor. He's been known to conduct experiments on unwilling subjects."

"What kind of experiments?" Ziva asked, while Gibbs asked:

"Have you any proof?"

"Nothing that Lex couldn't explain away."

"What's your relationship with Chloe?" Gibbs continued.

"We're friends. I dated her cousin briefly."

"Her cousin?" Ziva asked.

"Lois Lane. Lois' mom and Chloe's dad were siblings."

"Were?" Gibbs asked.

"Lois' mom died when she was six."

"I see. But the cousins are close?"

"Very," Oliver nodded. "I'm also friends with a friend of theirs. Clark Kent."

"Yes, Clark will be coming in a little later."

"What exactly happened to Chloe?" Oliver asked.

"That's what we're trying to determine. She was kidnapped yesterday."

Oliver frowned. "Look, I don't know what she was doing in DC. All she told me was she was working on a project."

"You're friends with her but she doesn't tell you ..."

"I don't ask questions. If Chloe wanted me to know what was going on, she would tell me. Of course, that's changed now that she's been kidnapped. Do you know what she was doing in DC? And how is NCIS involved anyway? I mean, it's a little out of your jurisdiction, isn't it? The kidnapping of a reporter from Kansas is an FBI matter."

If there was one thing Ziva disliked intensely it was a man who was a know-it-all. And she was really not liking the handsome billionaire.

"She came here to see me," Ziva said. "It turns out we're related."

Oliver's brown eyes studied her.

"Related how?"

"Cousins."

Oliver had clearly seen her Star of David, she realised, when he asked his next question.

"Chloe's not Jewish."

"Yes, we know that. What can you tell us about her mother?"

"Not much. Chloe asked me to help her when she needed to get her mother away from Metropolis and I organised for her to be placed in a hospital in Star City."

"Why did Chloe need to get her mother out of Metropolis?" Gibbs asked, even though he already knew the answer to that question.

"Because someone began giving her mother experimental treatments, without Chloe's consent. Chloe is her mother's next-of-kin and because of her mother's illness, she has full power of attorney."

"Have you heard of a woman named Moriah David?" Ziva asked.

Oliver raised an eyebrow at the last name, but his expression suggested he knew nothing.

"Should I? Other than the fact that she has the same last name as yours. But then, I imagine David is a fairly common surname in Israel."

"How do you know I'm from Israel?" Ziva asked.

"I made some calls before I came in," Oliver said, almost smugly. Another point against him, Ziva thought. He looked steadily at her. "Well, you called me in. Did you think I was going to come in here without some idea of what I was getting into? The fact that I'm being interviewed rather than interrogated makes me think you don't consider me a suspect, but I expect that might change the longer Chloe's gone."

Gibbs made a low, growling noise in the back of his throat.

"Mr Queen, I'm aware you have connections, but ..."

"Look, I get it. You want to find out what's happened to Chloe and so do I. Like I said, I dated her cousin and that makes Chloe important to me."

"Why do I get the feeling there is something you're not saying?" Ziva asked.

"I like Chloe. She's smart, tenacious and she'll make a hell of a good reporter. Well, she is already. But she also has a knack for getting into trouble. Just like her cousin."

But Ziva wondered if it was more than that. Oliver seemed to be hiding his real feelings. Sure, he sounded as if he admired Chloe, but she had the feeling it was more than just affection on his part. Otherwise, she thought, he would not have reacted so strongly to Luthor.

Mind you, she mused, it could have been that he just hated Luthor. That was certainly very clear.

Oliver was studying her, his brown eyes boring into her.

"There's something you should know," he said. "I called Chloe last night because someone paid her mother a visit."

"At the hospital?" Gibbs asked shortly.

Oliver nodded. "I don't know who he was or what he wanted with her. I haven't found out all the details. But he didn't stay long."

Oliver left shortly after, promising to keep in touch if he heard any more. Ziva returned to the bullpen to find McGee and Abby talking quietly. Abby turned and glanced at Gibbs before smiling sympathetically at Ziva.

"McGee, what do we know?" Gibbs barked.

"Uh, well, I tracked down one of Mrs Sullivan's doctors from Fairview. He said she claimed she was driving in Smallville the day the meteors hit. Chloe was in the car with her. That's how she believed she got her ability."

"What about Chloe?" Ziva asked.

McGee shrugged. "No idea. But if these meteors are as toxic as Mrs Sullivan claims they are, well ... I mean, Chloe has been around them a lot. Especially as a reporter."

"And what exactly were you and Abby whispering about?" Gibbs asked, glaring at the younger man.

"Abby has been doing some research of her own. There are people who claim that something else came down in that meteor shower. Just like some claimed to have seen a ship in the second meteor shower that hit Smallville three years ago."

"Conspiracy theories," Gibbs snapped.

Ziva fought a grin. She knew how much Gibbs hated conspiracy theories. It was one of those rules that he often quoted, although she forgot which number it was.

"Uh, excuse me, um, Agent Gibbs?"

Ziva looked around at the hesitant voice. Standing beside Gibbs' desk was a young man of about twenty. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with wavy, ebony black hair and gorgeous green eyes.

"The guard let me through," he said. "I'm Clark Kent."

Gibbs smiled. It was his patented 'friendly' smile but Ziva shivered. With Luthor, Gibbs had been anything but friendly, laying his cards out on the table. With this young man, he was likely going for the jugular. She swallowed hard and glanced at McGee, who shook his head. They both watched Gibbs lead Clark out of the bullpen. Gibbs paused and glanced at her. She almost slapped her forehead, having forgotten that Gibbs wanted her to question Clark.

"Whoa!" Tony said, coming in to stand beside them. "Who's the tall, dark and shark bait?"

Ziva shook her head and began to follow Gibbs along the corridor. He was showing Clark to the same interview room they'd interviewed Oliver in.

"So, Clark, how did you come to be in DC?" Ziva asked as they sat down.

"Uh, I was here, visiting my mom."

"I see. How did you get here?"

"Um, I, uh, drove. In my truck."

Ziva frowned. It had to be ... well, she couldn't think exactly how far it was, but it was quite a distance. Gibbs spoke up.

"You drove? It's over a thousand miles, Clark. That's at least a day's driving. With only short stops in between."

"Uh, yeah, well, I like driving."

He was lying, she thought. From what she knew about Clark, he lived and worked on a farm and only owned a beat-up pick-up truck. One that had already seen a lot of mileage. There was no way a truck would have made it over a thousand miles.

"What happened to Chloe?" Clark asked.

"Why don't you tell us?" Gibbs said smoothly. Ziva looked at her boss, giving him a reproachful look. She thought she was supposed to be the one questioning him.

Clark frowned at him, then puffed out his chest, trying to look a lot braver than he was.

"Look, like I said earlier, Chloe told me she was coming to visit someone in DC. And the only person I know here is my mom."

"Your mother is Senator Martha Kent?" Ziva asked, recalling the quick reading she had done knowing that Clark would be coming in.

Clark nodded, looking at her steadily.

"Mom took over the seat after my father ... died." He looked grieved for a moment and Ziva remembered his father's death was very sudden.

Clark began to look very unsettled as Ziva questioned him about what he did for a living and finally moved on to the topic of Chloe. He seemed extremely concerned that Chloe had been kidnapped. Ziva could tell he was beginning to realise why he had been asked to come in.

"I think I get where this is going," he said. "You think I had something to do with what happened to Chloe."

"Know something about interrogation techniques, do you?" Gibbs asked.

"Let's just say that Chloe's taught me a few things. Look, Chloe's my best friend. Why would I want to hurt her?"

"That's the question, isn't it? Why would you want to hurt her?"

"Do you ever give straight answers?" Clark asked, definitely rattled.

"That depends on the person."

Clark glared at the older man, his temper finally overriding what had clearly been his upbringing which had taught him to respect his elders.

"You're wasting your time," he said, "when you could be out there trying to find out who did this."

"Tell me about the meteor shower, Clark. There seems to be some theory that the meteors cause mutations. Is that true?"

Clark frowned at him. "What? What does this have to do with Chloe?"

"Well, she seems to be fairly knowledgeable on the subject. Tell me, Clark, does Chloe have a so-called meteor ability?"

Clark thinned his lips but sat back, looking as if he was going to refuse to answer. Gibbs turned the full force of the Gibbs stare onto Clark. Both men glared at each other.

Ziva looked up as someone knocked on the door. McGee entered the room. Crap! One of Gibbs' golden rules had been broken.

She could almost imagine Gibbs chewing McGee out, even as he got up to follow him into the corridor.

"What's rule number twenty-two, McGee? Never, ever bother me in an interrogation."

Ziva opened the door and went out, frowning as Gibbs strode angrily past her and back out to the bullpen. She stared, puzzled, as Tobias Fornell came into view.

"What the hell?" Gibbs roared.

"You wanna tell me what the hell you're doing investigating Moriah David?" Tobias growled back.

If it had been possible, Ziva's jaw would have dropped clear down to the floor.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Ziva watched the FBI agent and her boss glare at each other. She was conscious of the stares from McGee and DiNozzo. The senior agent came to stand beside her, clearly interested in the way the two older men were facing off.

"You know what this reminds me of? A Fistful of Dollars."

Ziva sent him a puzzled look.

"A Fistful of Dollars. It's a Clint Eastwood movie."

"I still do not understand," she said.

He smirked. "It's a western. Clint Eastwood faces off with a guy in the street, like they're gonna have a gunfight. They're both standing there, hands at the ready as if they're going for their guns. The guy gets his first, shoots Eastwood and thinks he's killed him. Only Eastwood has a steel plate under his poncho. Classic fake-out."

"Except this isn't a western, Tony," McGee answered.

They could all see the two men still glaring at each other, then Gibbs nodded his head in the direction of the elevator, which he often used as his private 'office'.

"Uh, don't you have someone still sitting in the conference room?" McGee reminded Ziva.

Clark! Shoot, she thought.

"Yeah. I better go check on him," she said.

Gibbs turned off the power to the lift, stopping it mid-floor, effectively preventing anyone from calling the lift and interrupting the 'meeting'. Fornell glared silently at him. The two of them weren't what Gibbs would call friends, but they weren't exactly enemies either.

Gibbs stood, crossing his arms, continuing to glare at the other man. Fornell sighed.

"Moriah David was in witness protection."

Gibbs remained silent.

"Twenty-five years ago, her partner in Mossad was gunned down right here in Washington. It was a mob hit. Except it was meant for her, not her partner. Eli David was involved in a deal with the mob which went sour." Fornell rolled his eyes. "You know David. He's always got his own agenda. The mob learned his younger sister was in the US and figured since they couldn't touch Eli, they'd go after her instead."

"Why didn't David protect his sister, if that was the case?"

"Moriah wanted out. There was no love lost between brother and sister and the relationship had apparently been strained for some time. Something about David arranging the killing of a man she'd been seeing. She was in the US helping her partner out as a favour, trying to locate a rogue agent. I don't know the details of that. You'll have to ask Eli about that. When her partner was killed, she turned to us, asked us for help. When David found out about his sister's defection, he effectively disowned her."

Which explained Ziva's father's refusal to discuss his sister or his niece.

"So Moriah changed her name to Moira and married Gabriel Sullivan."

Fornell nodded. "In '89 she was driving through the town of Smallville with her young daughter in the vehicle when there was a meteor strike. One of the meteors struck the car, trapping Moira in the vehicle. She received second and third degree burns trying to pull her daughter out of the car, requiring extensive plastic surgery."

"Is that all?"

Fornell shook his head. "A couple of years later one of the men suspected in the killing learned where Moira was. We sent a couple of agents to protect the family and she decided to leave her husband and five year old daughter until the threat was contained. She returned three months later."

"So the threat was contained?"

"Well, here is the strange part. One of the men tried to kidnap young Chloe off the street while she waited for her father to pick her up from school. A man comes out of nowhere and a witness swears he had bolts of electricity coming from his hands. I don't know if it's true or not, but it stopped our mob guy in his tracks. From what I hear, our intel suggests they got a clear message that Chloe Sullivan was off limits. Permanently."

"Maybe not," Gibbs told him. "Chloe has been kidnapped."

"What?"

Clark was speaking on his cellphone when Ziva returned to the interview room, mentally berating herself for leaving him alone too long.

Clark looked up, wide-eyed, clearly startled to see her.

"I have to go, Mom. Yeah, don't worry. I'm sure Chloe will be found soon."

Ziva sat down, watching as Clark sat on the opposite side of her.

"How well do you know Chloe's mother?"

"Uh, not that well. She was ... is, um, sick. Kind of."

Ziva nodded. "Yes, I know about her illness. Did you know she claims to have a meteor power?"

Clark looked uncomfortable, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck.

"Yeah, a lot of people claim to have these weird abilities. Some people think it's because of Luthorcorp. You know, because of the chemicals they use at their plants."

"Do you believe that?"

Clark shrugged. "I don't know." Ziva had the impression he was holding back on something.

"What is your relationship with Chloe?"

"She's my best friend. We've known each other since junior high. She moved from Metropolis when her dad got a job at the Luthorcorp plant in Smallville. She was in eighth grade." He smiled fondly. "Her first day at school, she came with me to the farm and we were just talking in the barn and she kissed me."

Ziva was amused in spite of herself. "She kissed you?"

He grinned. "Yeah, she said something like she knew I'd been thinking about it all day and figured we should just get it out of the way and be friends."

That was bold, Ziva thought. She didn't know Chloe that well, but she did get the impression that Chloe wasn't particularly shy. Unlike the young man sitting before her.

"Clark, can you think of any reason why someone would want to hurt Chloe?"

As she studied him, she saw Clark's face colour slightly. His eyes seemed to do an odd little dance and for a moment she saw a flash of anger in his expression. It was quickly covered up, however.

The younger man clearly knew someone who did want to hurt his friend.

"Tell me," she said quietly.

"I can't," he said, shaking his head. "It's not that I don't want to, it's just ..."

Ziva recalled something Oliver Queen had said earlier.

"Lex?" she said. "He was here this morning."

Clark's expression darkened and Ziva knew she'd hit on a sore spot.

"Lex used to be my friend, then he changed."

"What has he done? Your friend implied that Lex has been studying people against their will."

"My friend?"

"Oliver Queen. He also said there was a history between Chloe and Lex."

"You could say that."

"Clark ..." she began, but was interrupted when Gibbs walked in, his expression like thunder.

"Kent, if you know something about what has happened to Chloe, then you need to start talking."

"I don't know. I mean, yeah, it's possible Lex could have done it. He's kidnapped her in the past."

"Why? To do experiments on her?" Ziva asked. "Does Chloe have a meteor power, Clark?"

Clark turned red under the weight of Gibbs' glare. Ziva frowned at her boss as he looked again at the tall brunet.

"Has anyone been seen around Chloe lately?" the silver-haired agent barked. "Anyone suspicious?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know, or you won't say?" Gibbs leaned on the table, his reflection showing in the lacquer. "I don't know what you think you're protecting, Kent, but you are doing yourself no favours with me. I want to know everything. What you know about Chloe and her mother and about Lex Luthor and his experiments. I want straight answers! Now!"

Clark had clearly learned a thing or two as he remained resolute, refusing to give Gibbs the information he wanted. Ziva watched, feeling a twinge of sympathy for the young man as Gibbs continued to interrogate him for the next half hour.

Neither one of them were aware of Jenny Shepherd standing in the doorway until she cleared her throat. Ziva was startled to see an older redhead watching them, her eyes blazing. Ziva's eyes widened as she recognised the older woman and she swallowed hard. Martha Kent.

Jenny stepped forward, but Martha touched her arm, stopping her from speaking up.

"Agent Jethro Gibbs?" she asked.

"Who wants to know?" Gibbs snapped.

"I think you know who I am," she snapped back. "And I would like to know exactly what you think you're doing interrogating my son!"

"Senator ..." Gibbs began and Ziva realised he was not going to back down. "I am trying to save a young woman's life and I believe your son can help us."

"And how is shouting at him going to help you find Chloe?" she answered coolly. "I don't care for your tone, Agent Gibbs. The way you were talking to Clark leads me to believe you think he's involved. I know my son better than anyone and he would never do anything to hurt Chloe."

"Forgive me, Senator, but you're his mother. Of course you'd defend him."

Crap. This was going to turn into a battle of epic proportions if Ziva knew Gibbs as well as she thought he did. She glanced at Clark. He was watching his mother, open-mouthed, clearly never having seen her this angry. Even if there was nothing in her tone to imply her anger, Ziva realised she was indeed very angry as she glared back at the man.

As she continued to watch, Gibbs' icy glare seemed to soften. She knew the man's penchant for redheads and it seemed to be very clear that he had more than met his match in this one.

"Why don't we go up to the director's office and talk more about this," he said. "Calmly."

The attractive senator nodded. "Of course." She glanced at her son. "Clark, I'll straighten this out, sweetheart."

Clark was still staring open-mouthed as his mother left with the older agent. He turned to Ziva in astonishment.

"Um, what just happened?"

Ziva sighed and shook her head.

"Truthfully, I do not know."

She sighed. It looked like Gibbs had fallen for another one.

Martha Kent turned on Gibbs as soon as they entered the director's office. Gibbs noticed Jenny didn't say a word, just sat down at her desk.

"Agent Gibbs, I want to know what possessed you to interrogate my son. Clark would never ..."

Gibbs raised his hand. "I know. But I think he does know something about Chloe's kidnapping. Now I have a lead which I believe is connected to her mother."

"What do you mean, Clark knows something?"

"I mean, I think Clark knows more than he's telling about Chloe's mother and what happened to her. What do you know about Lex Luthor subjecting people to experiments?"

Martha sighed. "About eighteen months ago, Lex approached Senator Ed Burke to lobby for Congressional approval for something called Project Ares."

"Didn't you take over his senate seat when the Senator was killed?" Gibbs asked.

The redhead nodded. "Yes, I did."

"What was Project Ares?"

"The information is unclear, but from what my son and his friends have told me, Lex wanted access to military personnel so he could conduct experiments with meteor rocks."

"For what purpose?"

"It doesn't matter, as the project has been mothballed permanently."

"What does this have to do with Chloe or her mother?"

"I don't know. Clark and Chloe haven't said a word."

"What exactly is he trying to protect?"

"Does it matter? Agent Gibbs ..."

"Jethro," he said.

"Fine. Jethro. Your concern should be what has happened to Chloe. Not what Lex Luthor is up to."

Gibbs looked at her. Before Fornell had left, he'd implied that something Lex had done had probably been the catalyst. If what they both suspected was true, someone associated with the case twenty-five years earlier now had Chloe. But for what purpose, they couldn't fathom. Unless they were just out to hurt Moira for her part in it. If that was the case, then Chloe could very well be dead.

"I think something Lex has done has caused this," he said. "I need to know what Lex's interest is in Moira Sullivan."

"Why?" she asked.

Gibbs quickly outlined what Fornell had told him about the mob hit. Martha listened, nodding, occasionally interjecting with questions.

"All right," she said finally. "I want to talk to Clark alone for a few minutes. Then we'll see if we can help you get some answers."

"Thank you," he said, meaning it.

As he watched Martha leave the office, he reflected on the woman. She was certainly intelligent and beautiful. He smiled. It hadn't been that long since Hollis had left, but Gibbs felt a strong connection with Martha Kent.

He supposed part of it was she reminded him a little of Shannon. His first wife had a fire about her that Gibbs had loved and Martha had that same fire.

He heard Jenny clearing her throat and he looked around.

"Director?" he said coolly.

"Don't even think about it," she warned him.

As if he was ever going to listen to his former lover and his boss. Gibbs smirked at her, then went out.

Clark was surprised to see his mother walking in so calmly and speak quietly to Ziva.

"Would you mind giving us some privacy?" she asked. "It's all right. Jethro has agreed to this."

Clark raised his eyebrows. She was calling Agent Gibbs Jethro? He could see Ziva was not all that surprised by the casualness. She just nodded and went outside.

"Mom?" he asked.

"Clark, Agent Gibbs needs to know what you and Chloe have been working on. He needs to know what happened between Mrs Sullivan and Lex."

"But Mom," he protested. "If I ..."

"I know you want to protect Chloe, sweetheart, but there is much more at stake here. You don't need to tell him anything about you ..."

"What does Lex have to do with any of this?"

"Agent Gibbs believes someone from Mrs Sullivan's past have taken Chloe. And he thinks Lex might have inadvertently caused this. Sweetheart, Chloe's life could be at stake."

"Why can't I just ..."

"I don't want you exposing yourself if it can be avoided. Please, just talk to him."

"Okay," he said, quickly noticing the silver-haired agent had returned and was waiting outside.

His mother nodded and smiled, then glanced toward the doorway. Gibbs re-entered the room.

"Clark?"

"Okay, I'll tell you what I know about Mrs Sullivan," he sighed. "But please promise me it won't leave this room. It's just so I can protect Chloe, okay? And her mom."

"That's fine," Gibbs said, sitting opposite him.

Clark took a deep breath and began to talk.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

"I met Mrs Sullivan last year after she was taken from Fairview."

"Taken?"

"Well, yeah, I mean she was sick. It's not like she walked out."

Clark saw his mother snickering quietly in her seat at the end of the table. Gibbs sent her a look which said: 'not helping'.

"Um, anyway, we found out she was at a Luthorcorp facility."

"Clark, I know all this already. What do you know about Mrs Sullivan's abilities?"

"Um, look, I don't know a lot. Okay, I guess you know about the meteor shower. Well, the meteor rocks, um, changed people. There was this girl who could morph into anyone and she once turned into Lex Luthor and robbed a bank except Lex was at a meeting with about 200 other people." Clark knew he was getting into rambling territory, but he figured Gibbs needed some background.

"Go on."

"So, uh, there were a lot of people who had these weird abilities, and Mrs Sullivan seemed to be able to control them. Chloe told me this story that when she was eight, she came home from school and her hands were all covered in ink. Her mom told her to go wash her hands and instead Chloe was playing on her computer. Her mom got frustrated and sent her a, well, a message telling her to scrub her hands until the ink was off. Instead Chloe scrubbed until her hands bled."

Gibbs frowned. "It sounds like what you're telling me is, Chloe has an ability herself."

Damn it, Clark thought, this guy was just too smart. He had been trying to protect his friend, but he quickly realised there was no way to protect Chloe's secret and not answer his questions about Chloe's mom.

"Uh, yeah, I guess. Anyway, Chloe said that was why her mom had herself committed."

"She didn't want to hurt Chloe," Ziva said, speaking up for the first time since Gibbs had returned with Martha.

"Why would Lex Luthor be involved?" Gibbs asked.

"Lex has been studying meteor fr ... uh, meteor infected people."

"Why?"

Clark shrugged. Who knew why Lex did the things he did.

"I've given up trying to second-guess Lex," he said.

His mother spoke up. "Clark and Lex were friends for about four years," she explained. "I'm not sure exactly what happened between them, but I understand it was pretty bad."

"Clark, what do you know about Project Ares?"

Clark shifted nervously.

"I think it was some kind of project to create super-soldiers, like Lex was trying to replicate people's abilities and give them to these soldiers, but that project's done. I mean, there was kind of an explosion at Reeves Dam and Lex lost all his research."

He didn't tell Gibbs the real reason the research had been lost. Lex had been playing with fire when he'd captured the phantom, which had destroyed everything in its path before getting some of Clark's own DNA and using it to create a perfect, well almost perfect, copy of him.

Gibbs nodded. "All right. I think I might be getting an idea of what's been happening."

He stood up, looking around at Ziva.

"It seems to me that Lex has been digging more into Moira's background, perhaps trying to find something he could use against Chloe. I believe this may be what has brought her to the attention of the same people who tried to kill her twenty-five years ago."

"Um, Agent Gibbs?" Clark asked tentatively.

"Yes Clark?" he said, not unkindly.

"Does this mean that Chloe might be ..." He swallowed, clearly not wanting to say it.

"I certainly hope not," Gibbs said. "We're doing everything in our power to find her, Clark."

"So can I go?" Clark asked nervously.

"Yes, but keep in contact," Gibbs told him, nodding his thanks at Martha. She nodded back, a hand on her son's shoulder. Both of them looked deeply concerned.

McGee stood outside. He'd clearly been pacing.

"Uh, the director wants to see you in her office."

"Any other news?"

McGee shook his head. "Tony tried getting information out of one of his snitches but it looks like whoever took Chloe has gone off the grid. No one seems to know anything."

Well that just pissed him off. Gibbs well knew the longer it took to find a kidnap victim, the greater the chance they would be dead when they did find them.

"Get Lex Luthor back in here!" he snarled.

His phone rang as he headed toward Jenny's office and he did an about-face.

"Abs, tell me you've got something for me," he said, heading for her lab.

"Well ..."

"Abby ..."

He snapped the phone shut and walked into the lab a few minutes later. Abby was looking through what appeared to be code on one of the monitors.

"Hi Gibbs," she said.

He said nothing. Abby had always had a curious intuition when it came to his appearances within her lab and he never questioned it. Abby was also one of the few people he cared about with little reservation.

"So, what have you got Abs?"

"Well, you know how the kidnappers left no clues, well, except for some tyre tracks when they burned rubber. Yeah, let me tell you a lot of people seem to burn rubber outside Ziva's place, I mean we're talking about a high traffic area, but based on the chemical composition of the tracks I could tell which ones had been left there recently and so I think I identified the vehicle that took Chloe. And these guys are pros, Gibbs. I mean, we are talking luxury SUV here."

He sent her a look.

"Anyway," she continued, "The tyres belong to a 2007 Lexus GX, actually one of the first to be sold in this country. Huh, would have thought, being mob guys they would have gone for Italian, but hey ... Anyway, I emailed the registration number to McGee, so he's probably putting out a BOLO right about now."

She stood, grinning at him.

"So?" she said in her husky voice. "Who's your mama?"

Gibbs just shook his head and walked out, calling 'thanks Abs' over his shoulder.

"Well, I thought it was cute," she muttered to no one in particular.

Gibbs returned to the bullpen. McGee intercepted him before he could sit down.

"I tracked the SUV to a Marco Kominowski. Yeah, try saying that ten times fast."

Gibbs cocked an eyebrow at him. "Not funny, Elf Lord."

Tony decided to pitch in, bringing up more information on the plasma screen. "Kominowski. Russian father, Italian mother. He's a contractor for the Maroni crime family."

"Hit man?" Gibbs asked.

"I guess you could call him Jack-of-all-trades."

"Maroni wasn't the one who killed Moriah David's partner twenty-five years ago," Gibbs said, studying the hit parade.

"No, Maroni took over after Carmine Falcone lost it. He's still in Arkham Asylum in Gotham, but it wasn't Falcone's people either," DiNozzo said. "Anyway, back to Kominowski, word is he was a loaner."

Ziva frowned. She'd been silently watching until now.

"Loner? Surely if he is some kind of hit man for the mob ..."

"No, Tony means he was loaned out."

"Oh." She waved a hand as if to say 'carry on'.

Tony turned back to the plasma screen but Gibbs was already distracted by the redhead standing at the top of the stairs.

"My office," Jenny snapped. "Which is where you were supposed to be twenty minutes ago."

Gibbs ran up the stairs to the mezzanine floor, then followed Jenny to her office. Tony shot Ziva and McGee a look.

"Yeah, he's in for it."

McGee did something definitely non-McGee-ish. He smacked Tony on the back of the head.

"Ow!" Tony said.

Gibbs, meanwhile, was facing an extremely pissed off Jenny Shepherd. Part of it, he knew, was the way he had been acting with Martha Kent. He liked the woman, and Jenny would just have to deal with it.

"Jethro, why are you still working on this kidnapping? This is an FBI matter."

"Not when it concerns one of my people," he told her. "Chloe Sullivan, it turns out, is Ziva's cousin."

"It's still an FBI matter."

"I'm not going to continue arguing this with you," he said. "Fornell has already ..."

"I know; he called me."

"This is not up for discussion," he told her as his phone rang. "Gibbs!"

"Luthor's here," McGee told him. "And he's extremely pissed off."

"Put him in interrogation," Gibbs instructed.

"Who do you have in interrogation?" Jenny asked.

"Lex Luthor."

"Shit! Do you even know who he is, Gibbs? He happens to be one of the richest men in America."

"I don't give a damn if he owns the whole goddamn world! If he's responsible for any of this then he's going down."

Gibbs ignored her calls after him as he walked out of her office, striding angrily along the corridor to interrogation, where McGee was waiting. He handed him the notes Gibbs had already made on Luthor.

"Uh ..."

"Spit it out, McGee."

"Well, I just ... uh, never mind," the probationary agent said.

Gibbs took a few moments to cool down, then opened the door. Luthor wasn't sitting at the table; instead he was pacing the room.

"Agent Gibbs, what is this all about? I am a very busy man."

"Yes, so I've heard," Gibbs said, throwing the file down on the table. "Sit down."

"I don't have time for this."

"I said sit down!" Gibbs snapped.

Luthor looked completely taken aback, but he hid it quickly, sitting down slowly.

"I don't know what you think I've done, but ..."

"I'll do the talking. I know you're lying to me, Luthor. I know you know about Moriah David and let me be very clear. If Chloe Sullivan is killed because of your meddling I will hold you personally responsible. Do you understand me?"

"Meddling?"

"I know you were behind Moira Sullivan's transfer from Fairview to your Luthorcorp facility. I also know you've been studying her meteor power. What I don't know is why."

"I told you, I am not ..."

"Project Ares?" Gibbs asked, glancing in the file. McGee had obviously been doing a bit of indepth research into Senator Burke's files as there were a few notes about meetings with Luthor on the project, without going into too much detail.

"I was hoping to get government funding for the project. Unfortunately Senator Burke was killed before I could get that funding."

"What is Project Ares?"

"The research proposed a study into biological weapons."

Gibbs nearly snorted, but managed to hold back. Biological weapons implied using man-made viruses and such-like. Nothing in the term suggested he would be using people.

"Why don't we just cut the bullshit, Luthor. I know you were researching methods of creating super-soldiers, and I think you were planning on using Moira Sullivan's ability in some way."

"I'm fighting a war out there, Agent Gibbs."

"Against what? Aliens?" Gibbs snickered. "I'm well aware of your paranoid delusions."

"You have no idea what you're up against."

"You are using human beings as lab rats. That is not only abhorrent, it is highly illegal!"

"These aren't human beings," Luthor shot back. "They stopped being human when they began using their meteor abilities to hurt people."

"And you seem to be top of their list," Gibbs told him.

"People like Moira and Chloe Sullivan, and Clark Kent, should be locked up. They're a menace to society."

"Locked up or exploited for your own ends, Luthor?" Gibbs shouted back, ignoring the very obvious attempt at a deflection. "Who the fuck appointed you judge and jury?"

"Someone has to do what the government won't. They're too busy bleating about constitutional rights."

"Yet, you seem to think you're above the law."

"You can't prove anything and you know it."

"I think you just did it for me," Gibbs told him.

He walked out of the interrogation room, knowing that even if he turned over the transcripts to Fornell, the 'confession' would never hold up in court. Luthor had enough money to hire very powerful lawyers, who would ride roughshod over any attempt by the attorney-general to prosecute Luthor to the full extent of the law. The fact was, they had no evidence and he knew it.

When Gibbs returned to the bullpen, Ziva was speaking with someone. The man appeared to be of middle-eastern origin. He seemed afraid.

Ziva looked at him as he entered.

"Uh, Gibbs, this is Barukh Malin."

Gibbs cocked an eyebrow. This was going to be interesting.

Chloe continued to stare at her captor. They'd been at this for hours, and she was bored.

"Why are you keeping me here?" she asked.

"Does it matter?"

"It does if you're planning on killing me. Why don't you start answering a few of my questions. Like who hired you?"

"That is not how it is played," he said.

"Which means you don't know who hired you. Or maybe you do, but you don't know why."

"That's smart thinking, but it's still wrong. I know why they hired me. Because I'm very good at what I do. As for the deeper reason, well, that's their business."

"What exactly is it that you do?" she asked. "I mean, kidnapping seems tame for a guy like you."

"Careful, I might start to think you're trying to butter me up."

Chloe rolled her eyes. "Whatever!"

He looked at her. "You know, for a girl in your predicament, you seem awfully calm about this."

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she sighed.

"Try me," he said.

Chloe bit her lip. She wasn't supposed to be relating to this guy. He had, after all, kidnapped her. She'd overheard him talking to his partner and had caught enough of the conversation to realise it was something to do with Eli and Chloe's relationship to Ziva. David was obviously a common enough surname in Israel that they hadn't made the family connection. Or maybe they had and they just wanted her to confirm it.

She considered the situation again, wondering if she should just try to call for Clark. He had to be going out of his mind with worry about her. That was Clark all over. He might be a little self-involved sometimes, especially when it came to his powers, but she could understand why. Most especially now that she knew she could heal people with her touch. Clark carried a lot of guilt from the meteor shower, even though she had tried to tell him there was no way it was his fault. For either the first or the second meteor shower. Not unless he had some kind of magnetic field which attracted the meteors to him.

Yeah, right, she thought.

Still, Clark had to realise that despite all his incredible abilities, he couldn't fix the world's problems. Sometimes people had to learn to fix things themselves. Like this predicament she'd found herself in. The last thing she wanted was for Clark to expose himself to danger because despite this guy's friendly demeanour, he was dangerous.

She sighed and dropped her head.

"I'm tired," she said. "Look, we've been doing this for hours."

He smirked, standing up, all friendliness gone. He pressed the speed dial on his phone, turning his back on her.

"Yeah. What do you want me to do with her?" He turned again to look at her. "Oh don't worry. I'm sure Eli will get the message."

Chloe frowned as he put his phone away and took out his gun.

"I'll make this quick," he said.

"What did Eli David do to them?"

"Dicked them on a deal. That's why they went after your mom. Well, now, it's been fun, Chloe, but ..."

"What makes you think Eli's going to care if you kill me?" she said, struggling in earnest against the cuffs that held her.

"He won't, but he won't have to know you're dead. It's just one less complication." He shrugged. "Sorry, I'm sure you're a great kid and everything. Your mom would sure miss you, if she even understood. You've seen my face and in my line of work, well, that's just not good for me."

Ziva's phone started ringing on her desk before she could take Malin down to interrogation. Frowning she picked it up and listened. Her frown turned into a scowl.

"Ziva?"

She shook her head, then pressed the speakerphone button. Tony frowned at what sounded like gibberish.

"It's Hebrew," Ziva muttered, seeing the frowns on each face of the men in the room. "It's a recording."

"What are they saying?"

"It's for me to get a message to my father. 'Return the money you stole from us, with interest, or your niece dies'." She stared up at them. "They're going to kill her if he doesn't pay them the money within twenty-four hours."

"How much money?" Tony asked.

Ziva shook her head. "I don't know. I don't know what it would be in interest after twenty-five years."

McGee was already writing on a slip of paper. He'd obviously heard the original amount in the message.

"If we calculate interest, based on the current rate of five percent per annum, that adds up to around ... $100 million."

In a small cabin about fifty miles out of the city, a shot rang out.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Barukh Malin, or whoever he was, seemed nervous as Gibbs sat with him in the interrogation room. Ziva watched from the observation room. She'd already tried to get through to her father, but had been told he was out of reach and couldn't be contacted.

Sighing, she folded her arms, glancing at Tony as he came in.

"I thought you were still on that case in Norfolk?" she asked, turning back to the interrogation.

"That can wait. This the guy who broke into your apartment?"

She nodded.

"He claims the door was already open." She shook her head. "Something does not ..." Damn it, she could not think of the idiom.

"I think you mean it smells bad," Tony said quietly.

Tony could be obnoxious at the best of times, but when things looked bad, he was always in your corner. It was little wonder Gibbs considered Tony to be his best agent, although he never actually said it out loud, especially not to Tony, whose head would only get bigger with the praise.

"We're doing everything we can," he continued.

"It's not enough," she said.

Barukh was growing agitated. Ziva turned up the volume on the speaker so she could hear what was being said.

"Why did you go to Officer David's apartment?" Gibbs was saying.

"As I told her, I needed to talk to her."

"Are you even Mossad?"

"Yes!" he said insistently. "Please, I need to speak to Officer David. She is the only one who can help me."

"Help you do what?"

"Find my father. I know her father had something to do with his disappearance. I was only a small boy when it happened, but ..."

"When exactly did this happen?"

"Twenty-five years ago. It has taken me this long to uncover the truth."

"Talk!"

"My father was sent here on a mission but he disappeared. There were stories, that he went rogue, but my mother did not believe it."

"What was the mission?"

"I do not know. All I know is, two Mossad agents were sent after him and they disappeared as well. One of them was the director's sister."

It was as if Gibbs froze. Ziva blinked, looking quickly at DiNozzo. Maybe she had been wrong about the man. Maybe he did have something to do with the kidnapping after all.

"What do you know about the kidnapping of Chloe Sullivan?" Gibbs asked.

"I do not know this Chloe Sullivan," Malin told him. "I came here to find the truth about my father, since I could not learn it from Director David. That is all I am here to do, I swear to you."

"Then why did you break into Ziva's apartment?"

"I did not break in," he said insistently. "I swear this to you on my life. The door was open."

Ziva shook her head. The man was lying, he had to be, even as her gut instincts told her the man was telling the truth. If it hadn't been him in her apartment, then who, she thought. Unless the men who had kidnapped Chloe had been in her apartment as well. The question was, what were they looking for?

"Seems like this is getting more complicated by the second," Tony murmured.

Ziva was about to answer him when there was a knock at the door. McGee looked in.

"Hey, we got a hit on the BOLO."

Ziva quickly followed McGee out to the bullpen, picking up her gun.

"Address?" she said.

"The vehicle was spotted about fifty miles west of the city," McGee told her, quickly putting the location on the screen. It appeared to be in Leesburg, Virginia.

"Should we tell Gibbs?" Ziva asked.

Tony sent her a look, grabbing his own gun.

"I really think we should," McGee said.

"Rule twenty-two, McGoo," the senior agent reminded him.

McGee sighed. Ziva spared him a sympathetic look as she followed DiNozzo down to the garage. He grabbed the keys to one of the vehicles and turned to her.

"I'm driving," he said firmly.

Ziva bit her lip, but said nothing. She wasn't in the mood to fight with him.

As he drove as fast as was safely possible out of the city, Ziva fingered the gun in her holster, staring out of the window. It seemed to all boil down to her father. Certainly her relationship with Eli wasn't as loving as it could be. The elder David had always been distant, his focus more on his job than his family. But until Chloe had shown up, he had been the only family she had.

She'd already lost her sister in a suicide bombing, and of course, she'd had to shoot her brother after he'd shot and killed NCIS agent Caitlin Todd and was planning on killing Gibbs.

"You're worried about her, aren't you?" Tony said quietly as he drove.

"Yes."

"Ziva, I know she's supposed to be your cousin and everything, but aren't you taking this all a bit personally?"

"No."

"Okay, so it's going to be like that is it?"

"You have no idea how I am feeling right now, Tony, so just drop it."

"Look, we both know what it's like to have family who couldn't give a crap about us ..."

"My father ..."

"Yeah, your father is such a loving father his own son hated him and I get the feeling you're not exactly his biggest fan either. Still, he's your dad. I get that."

"Why are you so interested?" she asked.

"Because I can see you're upset about this, and no doubt angry at your father. I mean, it's fairly obvious they're out for revenge against him and Chloe just got in the way, that's all." He glanced at her. "And I don't think for a minute this is about money. What I do think is they want money because it's the only thing someone like Eli would understand more."

Ziva frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

"All I know about your old man is he doesn't give a crap about Chloe, or Moriah, and I think they know that. I think they're just using ransom as a way of hitting him where they think it will hurt him the most. Too bad they don't realise he's just an ice-cold unfeeling bastard."

"You don't know that. You know nothing about my father."

"Oh, come on, Ziva, I haven't heard you once talk about him in the nearly three years you've been working as the Mossad liaison."

"Well, I haven't heard you talk about your father either," she said.

"That's because I know my father doesn't give a shit about me."

She didn't understand Tony. As she'd felt earlier, he could be obnoxious but she sometimes wondered if it was just a smokescreen. Like the way he hid his brotherly feelings toward McGee behind sarcasm and hazing. In many ways, it did look like a sibling relationship between the two.

Her phone rang and she picked up.

"Officer David."

"Where the hell are you?" Gibbs barked.

"Virginia," she answered. "Did McGee not tell you?"

"He did."

"We're almost there," Tony commented. "Tell the boss we'll keep him posted."

"We will keep you posted," she repeated into the phone.

"You better!"

Tony glanced at the GPS. "You did put in the right co-ordinates?" he asked.

"Yes, of course."

"We seem to be heading to Morven Park. I think there's a country club around here somewhere. I played golf with ... uh, you know what, never mind."

Ziva frowned at the screen. Why would someone bring Chloe out here, she thought.

There was a small private road veering off the main road. Tony slowed to take the sharp turn and the car protested as it was driven over very rough terrain. Ziva hung on to the door, bouncing in her seat. The vehicle might have the capacity to handle uneven terrain but it was still rough.

"There's the Lexus," Ziva pointed, seeing it partially hidden by some trees. Tony stopped the car and backed up, turning into the clearing.

They got out and carefully approached the car, guns drawn. There was a cabin just beyond which appeared to be roughly put together.

Normally, they would have waited for back-up, but time was of the essence. Tony glanced at her, checking around the side of the cabin. He held up a finger and pointed toward the rear, telling her he would take that side. Ziva nodded and quietly mounted the rickety steps to the porch.

She reached for the door handle, gun held at the ready, waiting, giving Tony a few seconds to get to the rear. She heard his yell.

"Federal agents!"

Ziva kicked open the door, pointing the gun inside and checking the room was clear on one side, using the door as a shield at her back before turning and checking around the door, kicking it shut.

"Clear!" Tony yelled.

She quickly went through the room, spotting Tony. There were only about four rooms to the entire cabin; a small kitchen off to the left and a large room bare of furniture. There were two other rooms. One was empty and the other ...

Tony gingerly opened the door and stepped back with a heavy sigh, glancing at her. Ziva looked at what he was pointing at. There was a body stretched out on the floor. They'd been shot in the head.

In the middle of the room was a wooden chair which had been tipped over. Handcuffs were attached to one of the rails on the back, with one of the cuffs open.

Ziva looked up at her partner.

"She was here, but where is she now?"

"Probably with the same person who shot this guy," Tony replied, kicking the man's leg.

Ziva bent and touched the body. "It's still fairly warm. It cannot have happened that long ago. Perhaps an hour or two at the most." It had taken them about an hour to get there by the time they'd left NCIS headquarters.

"Ducky will be able to tell us more," Tony answered.

It was about two hours before Ducky could reach there in the medical examiner's truck. Palmer was driving. They parked behind Gibbs' vehicle. Gibbs himself had arrived about thirty minutes earlier and told them to begin processing the scene.

"Of course," Ducky was telling Palmer as they walked toward the cabin, "this whole area was occupied by various Native American tribes for about 400 years, long before the Europeans settled of course.

"Yes, well," he continued, "I don't want to bore you with such trivia."

"Of course not doctor," Palmer said as they entered the crime scene.

"Well, let's see what our friend here has to tell us," Ducky said crouching down. He quickly pulled out the thermometer and tested the liver temperature. "Well, Ziva, I would say you would have been correct in your brief assessment. This man has been dead for about four hours, give or take."

"I would say the cause of death would be fairly obvious, wouldn't you, Duck?" Gibbs said, coming in behind Ziva.

Ducky shot him a look over his wire-rimmed glasses.

"Quite, Jethro. Mr Palmer, if you don't mind ..."

Palmer grinned, his eyes twinkling behind his spectacles. He set to work wrapping up the body.

Ziva handed Gibbs a wallet in an evidence bag.

"We identified him as Kominowski," she said, stepping out of the room and around McGee, who was busy taking evidence photos. "It appears he was taken by surprise."

"How do you figure that, David?" Gibbs asked, eliciting a frown from her. Well, there was no call for sarcasm, she thought.

XXXXXXX

Clark looked at his mother across the table in the cafe.

"I don't know what to do. I mean, Chloe would call, wouldn't she?"

"If she was capable of it," Martha said. "Have you called Lois?"

"Uh, no."

"Sweetie, don't you think Lois would want to know if Chloe was missing?"

"Yeah, you're right."

Martha handed him a key. "Listen, I have to get back to the office just to finish up some paperwork, but stay at my apartment. Don't go back to Metropolis. I don't want agent Gibbs to get any more suspicious of you than he already is."

Clark nodded. He'd listened in on the interrogation between Lex and Gibbs and heard Lex say something about him.

It was starting to grow dark as he headed toward his mother's apartment. He dialled Lois on his cellphone.

"Hey, Lo ..."

"What do you want, Smallville? I'm busy."

Clark had heard she had a new boyfriend after she'd taken the job at the Planet and he guessed she was busy with him.

"Listen, Lois, Chloe's been kidnapped."

"What?"

Clark might be invulnerable, but even his ears hurt with that screech of hers.

"How long have you known about this?"

"It only happened last night," he said.

"Well, where is she?"

"I don't know. NCIS is investigating."

"What do you mean they're investigating? Clark, do you know the statistics? If they don't find a kidnapping victim within twenty-four hours, it's a fairly good chance that they're ..."

Clark swallowed. He did not want to hear the statistics. He did not even want to think about the possibility that his best friend might be ...

He ran up the stairs to his mother's fifth floor apartment and spent the next hour or so on the laptop at the table, trying to research as Chloe would. Just how did she do it, he thought. He had tried using his super-hearing, but hadn't been able to track her.

The doorbell rang and he x-rayed through the door, surprised to see who the visitor was. He flung open the door.

"Oliver?"

"Your mom said you were here," his friend said.

"What are you doing here?"

"Obviously the same thing you are. Trying to figure out what's happened to Chloe. Have you heard anything?"

"No. I talked to Agent Gibbs at NCIS ..."

"Yeah, so did I. I'm sure he'd call if he had anything."

Clark sighed. "I'm worried and I'm scared Oliver. If anything has happened to Chloe ..."

His friend put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, Chloe's strong. She can handle this."

Clark had seen the worry lines etched in his friend's forehead and knew Oliver was trying to be strong for him.

"You're worried about her too," he pointed out.

"Well, yeah, she's my friend too," the blonde answered, his eyes evasive.

"Or maybe more?" Clark said.

"I was dating Lois," Oliver reminded him.

"But you like Chloe as more than a friend."

Oliver refused to look at him, which told Clark everything he needed to know. As much as Oliver was attracted to Lois, he'd clearly been attracted to Chloe as well.

Clark continued to stare at his friend, who began to grow uncomfortable under the weight of that stare.

"Okay, so Chloe and I have been exchanging a few, uh, flirty emails, but it's nothing serious."

"I didn't say there was anything wrong with it," Clark protested, "but obviously you do if you're trying to avoid the subject."

"I was dating Lois," Oliver repeated.

"You're not dating her now." Clark looked evenly at his friend. "I mean, don't you think it's possible that the reason things didn't work out with Lois is because you're not meant to be? I mean, if you really want to be with someone, you'd be honest with them."

"Yeah, I didn't see that happening with you and Lana."

"Lana knows about me now," Clark said, although he was still uncertain about his relationship with Lana. Yet here he was lecturing Oliver about the same thing. It looked like he could talk the talk, but couldn't walk the walk.

The door opened again and his mother came in.

"Oliver! It's nice to see you," she said, coming forward and giving him a kiss on the cheek and a hug.

Oliver seemed to relish the gentle parental affection. From the moment he and Martha had met, she'd treated him like a second son. She'd been the same with Lex, although far more wary of him. Then again, Lex had been prickly from the beginning. Oliver, at least, was less shy about returning the affection.

"I called Lois," Clark told his mother. "She said she was going to get the next flight out."

They all sat down at the table. Oliver looked at them.

"You might as well hear this from me. Yesterday a man was seen visiting the hospital where Chloe's mom is being treated. I found out he's connected with the leader of a crime family who was sent to prison twenty-five years ago."

Martha nodded. "I have some news as well," she said. "Agent Gibbs called me. The man, or rather one of the men who was holding Chloe was found in a cabin near Morven Park."

"Where's that?" Clark asked. Geography had never been his strongest subject, which was ironic considering his ability to run great distances in minutes.

"Near Leesburg," Oliver told him. "What do you mean found?"

"Dead," Martha answered. "He was shot in the head."

"What about Chloe?" Clark asked, his stomach roiling with a sick feeling of dread.

"She wasn't there. The most they could surmise from the crime scene was that the kidnapper was shot and Chloe was taken alive."

Clark was getting a very bad feeling about this.

"Lex!" he said. "It has to be. He's been looking for a way to get back at Chloe. Maybe this is it."

"I don't know, Clark," Oliver said. "I mean, I hate Lex as much as you do, but would he really ..."

"He had Senator Burke murdered last year," Clark pointed out. "I mean, maybe we could never prove it, but he was trying to cover up the fact that he was behind Project Ares. Especially after the senator closed down the project."

"Sweetheart, you don't know that."

"Mom, I think I know Lex better than anyone. This is just the kind of thing he would do."

"What?" Oliver asked. "Save her so he can kill her?"

"Maybe not kill her, but he'd use her to get what he wants."

"What would that be, Clark?"

"Her meteor ability."


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Oliver frowned. "I don't know, Clark. What purpose would Lex have in kidnapping Chloe for her ability? Project Ares is dead. I kind of think your feelings for him are clouding your judgement."

Clark glared at his friend. "You'd be the last person I'd expect to defend Lex."

"I'm not defending him," Oliver told him. "I'm just trying to get you to see this rationally."

Martha touched his hand before Clark could go off into a tirade.

"Oliver's right, sweetheart. According to what Gibbs told me, Lex might have inadvertently caused this by digging into Moira's past, but I don't think he would shoot a man point blank in the head, then kidnap Chloe."

"Well, then who?" Clark said, trying to see it from their perspective. He remembered his mother going to Lex and Lana's engagement dinner the year before. Even when Lex was at his most evil, his mother tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. He'd always known she had a soft spot for the older man, given the fact she had felt sorry for the young man who'd had to grow up far too fast.

"I think right now we're all too tired to think straight," Oliver said reasonably.

"Why don't I call a restaurant and get them to send up some dinner," Martha suggested.

Clark nodded in agreement, still worried about Chloe. He had tried again to use his super hearing to locate her but so far had been unable to hear anything. If ... no, when he found her, he was going to have a serious talk with her about not calling for him when she was in trouble. That was the problem with Chloe. She was always bravely in thick of things. There was such a thing as being too brave, he thought.

The food came and all he could do was pick at it, trying to guess what had happened to his friend. Despite the fact she had healed Lois at the dam, he had no idea if she would be able to heal herself if she got hurt. They hadn't really talked at length about her meteor power and how it affected her. Had she had it all along and if so, why couldn't she have healed herself when she fell out of the window at the Luthor mansion back in freshman year. Or was it a latent power and something that hadn't shown up until recently.

"Clark, honey, aren't you hungry?"

Clark looked at his mother. Both she and Oliver had cleared their plates, while his was still full.

"I'm just ... I'm worried about her."

"We all are, but you need to keep your strength up," Oliver reminded him. "You're no good to her otherwise."

"Actually, I'm not even sure I actually need to eat," he said. "It's the sun that fuels my abilities, not ..." His mother sent him a look and he quickly ate, just to appease her.

After everything was cleared away, Oliver decided it was time for him to leave.

"Since Lois said she was catching the next flight out, I'd rather not be here when she gets here," he said.

"Coward," Clark said, shaking his head. "You just wanna leave so you don't have to face your ex-girlfriend."

Oliver canted his head. "Technically, we haven't officially broken up."

"She's dating another guy, Oliver, and you've been cyber-flirting with Chloe. I'd say that's pretty much a given. What's the real reason you don't want to face her?"

"You've never seen Lois when she's on the warpath, have you?"

"Are you kidding? I lived with her for a year, and not in the lived with her, lived with her sense, so get your mind out of the gutter right there."

"Now who's got the dirtier mind? Me, or the guy who just thinks he knows what I'm thinking?"

Clark rolled his eyes at his friend. Well, he had walked into that one.

"Trust me, Lois would be the last woman on Earth I would ever consider ..."

Oliver just smirked and patted him on the shoulder. "Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that, Farmboy. I bet in a couple of years you'll be eating your words."

Clark snorted. Him and Lois? That would never happen in a million years, he thought.

Oliver left with a final grin and a hug from Martha. Clark turned and looked at his mother, hearing her soft laughter.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing. I like Oliver. I think he's good for you."

"He's annoying," Clark sighed.

"Just like a certain reporter?" Martha said, grinning.

"Okay, Mom, you've had your fun at my expense. I'm gonna go get ready for bed."

They'd decided Clark should stick around in case Gibbs or the rest of the NCIS team needed to talk to him again, rather than have him run back to Smallville and arouse suspicion.

He slept on the couch as the spare room was full of books and papers his mother used in her work. Since he didn't actually have any pyjamas with him, Clark had to sleep in just his boxers.

He was woken from a deep sleep by a pounding on the door.

"Smallville! I know you're in there."

Oh great, he thought, rolling over to stare blearily at the clock on the mantel. Three am. He did not want to deal with Hurricane Lois at three o'clock in the morning.

Yawning, he got up and went to the door, unlocking the deadbolts. He glared at the girl.

"Lois, you make enough racket to wake the dead," he said, yawning again.

Lois punched him in the shoulder and pushed her way past him.

"Well, that works out, since you sleep like the dead."

Clark closed the door and turned, watching as Lois put down her large suitcase. What was she carrying in that thing anyway, he thought. It wasn't like she was going on a pleasure cruise.

"Women," he said softly to himself.

"Say something Smallville?" Lois asked, turning to look at him. Her gaze rested on his naked torso and she looked as if she'd been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. Her eyes went wide. "Uh..." She appeared to be biting her lip.

Clark continued to stare at her until she scowled at him.

"Geez, cover up, will you? I've already had one eyeful of Clark Junior. That's enough for anyone's lifetime."

Clark grabbed his t-shirt and pulled it on over his head.

"Gee Lois, don't hold back. Anyone would think you found the sight of my body repugnant."

Lois didn't answer that, but she was turning red. Clark decided not to call her on it. He was traumatised enough already.

The bedroom door opened and Martha came out.

"Lois, I thought I heard you," she said.

Lois smiled over-brightly. "Hi, Mrs K. I came as soon as I could get a flight out."

"Well, as much as I love seeing you, sweetie, it's three o'clock in the morning and some of us have early meetings."

Lois turned an even brighter red. "I'm sorry. I'm just so worried about Chloe."

Martha hugged her. "We all are, honey. Just keep it down to a dull roar." She looked at Clark. "I'm going back to bed."

Lois sat down on the couch, grabbing the blanket.

"So, Smallville, wanna tell me why my baby cousin was in DC?"

"Lois, this can wait until morning. Now get off my bed."

"Hell no, I've just been flying for over two hours and I'm beat. You can sleep on the floor."

"No way!" he said, grabbing the edge of the blanket and pulling at it.

Lois pulled back. "Get your own bed," she told him, scowling.

"You're on my bed!"

"It's mine now. Finders keepers!"

Clark growled. He was so not doing this.

"I was here first!"

"What's your point, farmboy?"

"Lois, cut it out. I mean it! I'm really not in the mood for this."

Lois grinned at him mischievously. "We could always share."

Clark rolled his eyes. "Only when pigs fly, hell freezes over and you are the last woman on Earth. Now give me my blanket and get off my bed!" he told her, pulling hard enough to make her fall off.

"Ow!" she said, tears in her eyes as she rubbed her backside. "That really hurt, Smallville!"

Clark bit his lip and reached for her. "I'm sorry, Lois, I ..."

She grasped his hand and pulled back hard enough to make him stumble, then rolled onto him, smirking.

"You're so gullible!" she laughed.

That did it. He was not putting up with this. Clark rolled so he was now on top of her, wrestling with her for the blanket. Lois put up a strong fight, but she was no match for him when he found her ticklish spots. She squealed with laughter, trying to avoid his hands.

"I'm gonna get you for this, Smallville!" she giggled.

Clark grabbed her wrists before she could try to punch him and pushed them up above her head.

"Do you give?" he asked.

"Hell no!"

"Say it, Lois."

"You're a pig, Smallville!"

"Oink!" He jabbed her in the ribs and she squirmed. "Give!"

"Okay, okay," she told him. "The couch is yours."

Victory, he thought. He helped her up and let her go, watching as she walked to the bathroom. He grabbed another blanket and pillow from the closet and set them in the recliner chair. It wouldn't be as comfortable as the couch but it was still a reasonable size.

He settled back on the couch with the blanket, stripping off his t-shirt, just as Lois re-emerged. He pretended not to hear her as she sighed and switched off the light, then settled.

"Do you think she's okay, Smallville?"

Clark bit his lip. "If I know Chloe, she can take care of herself."

"I'm worried about her."

"I know. Me too."

XXXXXX

"What do we got?" Gibbs said, striding into the bullpen.

All three members of the team turned and looked at him, their faces worn with lack of sleep. Neither one of them had left after they'd returned from processing the crime scene and all three were wearing the same clothes they'd worn the day before.

"From my perspective, it looks like it was an execution-style killing," DiNozzo told him.

"Ziva?" Gibbs looked at her as if he expected her to refute that assessment, but she shook her head.

"It looked that way to me as well. It was quick and clean."

"Relatively speaking," Tony finished.

"Mossad?" Gibbs asked, raising an eyebrow at the Israeli officer.

"Possibly," she said.

"Have you contacted the director to query his involvement?"

"As soon as we got back," Ziva said, nodding. "I was unable to reach him."

"What about Luthor?" Gibbs asked. He doubted Luthor was involved but then again, the man did have a history with Chloe. He wouldn't put it past him to have tried to track down the kidnappers.

"He's still in town, staying at hotel here in DC," Ziva said.

Gibbs nodded. "Fine. You and DiNozzo go talk to Luthor."

With that, he strode out of the bullpen, intending to go down to Abby's lab. Instead, he found himself staring at Fornell.

"When were you going to tell me a mafia contractor was lying on a slab in your morgue?" Fornell asked.

"Now's good," Gibbs said.

"Damn it, Jethro ... this is not your case. It's an FBI matter."

"I don't give a damn!" the team leader told the agent.

"Look, we sent a guy to try and talk to the mother but she's catatonic and totally unresponsive. Her doctor wasn't able to help except to tell us she got a visit from someone connected to the Morolto crime family."

"Yeah, I heard about the visit by Oliver Queen."

Fornell frowned. "This little girl of yours knows people in high places. Lex Luthor, Oliver Queen. I'm surprised she hasn't met Batman," he said with a snort.

"Fornell ..."

Tobias scowled. "Gibbs, this is our jurisdiction. Why are you riding me?"

"You do what you have to do for family," Gibbs told him.

"Yeah? Even if that family is a manipulating SOB like Eli David?"

Fornell followed him into the lab. Rock music was already blaring and Abby was at the computer, her head bopping to the beat. Gibbs grimaced. It was way too early in the morning for this.

"Abs," he said.

She took a sip from the giant-sized Caf-Pow which was sitting on the desk beside her. Gibbs glanced at Fornell, who shrugged and went to turn down the music.

Abby whirled. "Hey, who turned off the ... Gibbs!"

"What have you got Abs?"

"Well, not much. The bullet smashed the vic's head like a pumpkin, like totally mashed," she said, clapping her hands together. "Whoever did this was like a pro, I mean they totally cleaned up. No bullet casings, nothing. I mean, if it hadn't been so obvious by the way the guy's brains were all over the place, you wouldn't even know he was shot. Well, unless you were like Ziva or Tony."

"All right, all right. Anything else from the crime scene?"

Abby shrugged. "Sorry Gibbs."

Damn it, he thought, glaring at Fornell. Dead end.

By the time he and Fornell returned to the bull pen, he could see Tony looking harassed. As he turned and looked at the young woman harassing the senior agent, he could see why.

"Are you going to tell me what you know about my baby cousin's disappearance or not?" she said, glaring at DiNozzo with her hands on her hips.

Gibbs bit his lip to prevent a rare smile as he watched.

"Look, miss, I don't know how you got through security without ..."

The woman rolled her eyes. "Oh please. The general couldn't stop me taking a tank to my senior prom. Your guard was easy pickings."

Clark Kent came through with the guard, looking just as harassed.

"Lois, you can't just ... oh, hello Agent Gibbs."

"Clark. You want to explain this?"

"Um, this is, uh, Lois. Lois Lane. She's Chloe's cousin."

"Well, hey, looks like it's a family reunion," DiNozzo said, appearing to recover his equilibrium. He looked the girl up and down.

"DiNozzo! No!" Gibbs said sharply. Well, the girl was barely twenty-two.

Lois looked at the agent. "Are you kidding me?"

DiNozzo shrugged and smiled.

Gibbs sent his agent a full force glare and he backed off.

"Miss Lane, I'm afraid we have no news as yet."

"What the hell are you people doing?" she asked, her voice rising. Gibbs quickly noticed Kent backing off.

"Uh, Lois, don't ..."

The girl turned on her friend. At least, Gibbs assumed they were friends.

"Don't you dare, Smallville! Don't you dare tell me to back off. This is Chloe we're talking about. I didn't fly here in the middle of the night only to be given the brush-off by Mr Iron Ass here."

"Iron Ass?" Gibbs queried, cocking an eyebrow at the girl.

She snorted. "Please. I've grown up around Green Berets and Navy Seals. Think I don't know a military man when I see one?"

"You referred to a general?" Gibbs asked, ignoring the comment.

"General Sam Lane. Four stars and a general pain in my ass," she said, standing tall and glaring at him.

Kent sent him an apologetic look. Gibbs waved it off.

"So? You gonna tell me?"

"Lois, come on."

Gibbs liked this girl. She was sassy and bold as brass, reminding him a little of Shannon. She was also extremely upset and worried about her cousin. He could tell just from looking at her that she hadn't slept.

"We're doing everything we can," he said gently.

"What about the man who kidnapped her?" she asked.

"All we know is he was a hired gun for the mafia."

"So you're saying the mafia took her? Why?"

Gibbs glanced at those watching with avid interest from the bullpen, then gestured to Fornell to work with DiNozzo and the others, then led Lois and Clark to the conference room.

He sat her down and told her everything he knew. Lois became steadily more upset the more she learned about her aunt.

"How did I not know this?" she asked, tears in her eyes. She seemed unconscious of Clark's hand squeezing hers.

"Moira was under witness protection, Lois. She never told Chloe the truth."

"Why?" she wailed. "What kind of deal was this guy Eli working on that would make them wanna kill her? Aunt Moira never did anything to anybody!"

Gibbs took a deep breath, then got up and went to the door, glancing out into the hallway. It was empty. He turned and looked at them.

"Lois, Clark, what I'm about to tell you cannot leave this room. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," she said, nodding.

"Yes sir," Clark nodded.

Gibbs made sure the door was locked. He wanted no interruptions.

In 1981, Mossad had sent two agents to pursue a man they believed to be a double agent, working for not only Mossad, but also the same organisation Ari Haswari had been working for a few years ago. The man had sought refuge in the US, for six months working as a courier for what turned out to be the Morolto crime family. Eli David had learned of Malin's whereabouts through a contact in the family and had sent Moriah and her partner to retrieve him. The family had made him promise that none of their operations would be affected.

The courier, realising the agents were onto him, decided to run, with millions of the crime family's money. Eli, angered at the mission's failure, had taken it out on the crime family after he learned that someone in the family had warned Malin, sending one of his people to destroy several of the family's key operations. The head of the family, Sonny Morolto, had decided to take his revenge by sending his own people after Moriah.

XXXXXX

Ziva stared impassively at Fornell after he had finished relating the whole history.

"My father did this?" she said.

"Most of it is just conjecture, since Sonny hasn't talked."

"Well, it's no surprise then that they would demand a hundred million in ransom," McGee said quietly. "I imagine they would think of this in terms of money."

Ziva was quietly absorbing it all. She realised Tony had been right in the car. The crime family had chosen to demand money from her father because they knew he wouldn't see it by any other terms.

It still didn't tell them what had happened to Chloe.

XXXXX

Chloe woke to find herself on a bunk with a hard mattress. She was disoriented, a little light-headed. It was fairly obvious she had been drugged. The question was by whom.

As her head began to clear, she looked around the room. It was sparse, although clean. At least she wasn't tied down to anything, she thought.

She got up slowly from the bed, putting her feet down slowly on the floor and standing up, hit by a wave of nausea and dizziness. All at once, her mind was assailed with the image of the man who had kidnapped her, his brains splattered everywhere. There was another man who stepped from the shadows to release her from the handcuffs. Chloe had tried to run out of the room but he had caught her.

She struggled.

"No, I have to get out of here!" she said. "Please ... please."

"Shh, it will be all right," he said, his accent foreign.

Chloe felt something pricking her neck, then all was blissful silence as the blackness overtook her.

She shook her head to get rid of the memory. Chloe had seen and done a lot in her tenure in Smallville, not the least of which was watching her cousin bleed to death in front of her from a stab wound. She'd had to do a lot of things she never would have thought of herself doing since learning her best friend was an alien, but that had all been in the name of protecting his secret. Still, she had never seen anyone get their brains blown out before.

Chloe found herself dry-retching at the memory, doubling over, her head beginning to pound. There was nothing to come up which made her realise it had been hours since she had eaten anything. She had no idea how long she had been out, or how long the kidnapper had held her. Was she still kidnapped, she wondered.

Finally able to get up, Chloe walked on legs that felt like jelly to the door. To her surprise, she found it wasn't locked.

She looked around as she walked out into a dingy hallway, noticing something crawling on the walls.

"I apologise for the accommodations, Miss Sullivan," a voice said.

Startled, Chloe looked for the source of the voice, then frowned at the tall man with silvery hair and eyes so dark they looked almost black.

He had an accent similar to the other man who had shot the kidnapper although his voice was husky with age.

"Perhaps you would like something to eat," the man suggested quietly. "I am sure it has been a long time since you have eaten. You must keep your strength up."

"Why? I mean, if you're planning on killing me ..."

The man smiled, although it didn't reach his eyes.

"Now, why would you think I would do that?" he asked.

"I don't know. Maybe because you abandoned your own sister to the wolves." She glared at him and spat the last two words. "Uncle Eli."


End file.
